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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



-•?»?■ ' Cajiiji-iri! 

UNITED STATES OF A ME; CA. 






,0 



FOOD 



Adulteration 



OR, 



WHAT WE EAT, AND WHAT WE SHOULD EAT ! 



BY J". T. ZPZRJLTT. 






" Measures far the pwrt sction of the public health can be carried out only so 
far as the public re • -rives instruction in sanitary matters, and is thus prepared to 
give intelligent and wilting co-operation," 

—Dr. O. W. Wight. 



:-#-:■ 



CHICAGO; 

P. W. BARCLAY & CO., Publishers. 

1SS0. 



I 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year ,SSo, by" 
J. T. PRATT, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 






CONTENTS. 



An Argument . . . . vxi 

Articles of Food Substituted and Adulterated. 

Oleomargarine 13 

Milk, Butter and Cheese 31 

Flour 38 

Bread and its Ingredients 42 

Crackbrs, Cake and Pastry 47 

Glucose 49 

•Cane Sugar and Cane Sugar Syrup 55 

Honey and Other Sweets 59 

Jellies, Preserves and Fruit Butters 63 

Confectionery 66 

Tea 72 

Coffee 76 

Cocoa and Chocolate 78 

Meats 82 

Canned Meats 85 

Vinegar S8 

Pickles , 90 

Spices and Sauces 93 

Canned Fish and Game 97 

Wines and Liquors 99 



V i CONTENTS. 

Beer and Ale 101 

Aerated and Mineral Waters 103 

Flavoring Oils and Extracts 105 

Tinned Fruits and Vegetables 108 

Other Adulterations— Soap, Starch, Poisonous Cos- 
metics, Arsenical Poisoning, Tinwares, Mabble- 

ized Iron I 10 

Trichina 116 

The English Law HO 

Proposed Legislation 131 

Conclusion 133 



AN ARGUMENT. 



With the assistance of several gentlemen of recognized skill 
and large experience, both in the laboratory and with the micro- 
scope, the writer has endeavored to make such an investigation 
of the subject of food adulteration as would enable him to pre- 
sent to the public a popular rather than a scientific treatise there- 
on. Believing the subject to be one which concerns all, he has 
endeavored to discuss it in a manner comprehensible by all. 

His investigations were not conceived, nor have they been 
prosecuted, in a spirit of fanaticism. The search he has made foi 
the bad, has been a search for the good as well. "With no preju- 
dice, and no presumption of guilt in any case, he has simply 
endeavored to arrive at just and defensible conclusions. He has 
sought for nothing more and for nothing less than the facts, and it 
has been equally his aim to state nothing more and nothing less 
than the truth. 

The facts, as he has found them, require no exaggeration. 
They are astounding and sensational enough for all purposes, and 
furnish every argument that is needed to support a demand for 
the correction of a great and growing evil. 

The gross adulteration of almost every article that enters into 
the alimentary economy of the household, the insidious introduc- 
tion into the human system of impurities and poisons destructive 
of health, the unblushing frauds perpetrated by those who are 



viii AN ARGUMENT. 

jealous of their standing in society and in the church, the under- 
mining of the physical powers of the young, as well as the old, 
present an exhibition of recklessness and criminality, and suggest 
a state of public morals worthy of the days of Herod or the 
Borgias, but ill becoming the nineteenth century. 

The law is careful to provide a penalty for every crime against 
life, property, and morality, and to follow infraction with prosecu- 
tion. Why, then, should these crimes against health alone go un- 
punished ? 

When it is borne in mind that almost every household in the 
land is affected by this evil, that its victims are found in the higher 
no less than in the lower walks of life, among the intelligent as 
well as the ignorant, it becomes a matter of the most profound 
astonishment that the public mind and public conscience have 
been so little disturbed by its prevalence; that nothing like a na- 
tional sentiment has been aroused to demand corrective national 
legislation. 

The governments of Great Britain, France and other nations 
of the Old World, more careful of the health of their subjects and 
their citizens, and appreciating the pernicious effects of the daily 
consumption of impure and poisoned food, have enacted laws to 
check the practice of adulteration. Among enlightened nations 
we would seem, indeed, to stand alone in our neglect of this na- 
tional duty. 

If such safeguards are requisite and salutary in France and 
England, can it be said that they are needed less in our own coun- 
try? May it not be said rather that there is greater need for them, 
when we consider the peculiarities of our people and our institu- 
tions, when we bear in mind how slight the barrier is between 
Liberty and License, and how easily personal freedom may be 
construed into " the right to do wrong." The critic of oui system 
of government would be justified in instituting a comparison 
here which would not be flattering, either to our wisdom or our 
integrity as a people. 

Many of the arts practiced by the American adulterators of 



AN ARGUMENT. ix 

food have been borrowed, in fact, are the cast-off practices of the 
former adulterators of the Old World. While we have imported 
these evil arts, it is a sad reflection that we have not imported also 
the salutary laws restraining them. 

This shutting off of the foul current from its former outlets 
in the Old World has caused it to seek new channels, and it is 
hardly necessary to state that our own country has become the 
natural reservoir, not only of the impure and fraudulent products 
of manufacturers at home, but of those of the foreign producer 
and adulterator as well. Articles, the sale of which is interdicted 
in France and Great Britain, are shipped in quantities from those 
countries to the United States. The Chinese merchant has 
learned that he must furnish one character of tea for English con- 
sumption, while he can with impunity supply the American market 
with quite another. The dregs of the wine tanks of France which 
cannot be placed in any market of the Old World, are doctored up 
and shipped at a profit to us; while much of the alcohol annually 
exported by the American distiller, is returned to us colored 
flavored and branded as brandy. These are facts well understood 
in other countries, if they are not in our own. Cheapness, which 
invariably signifies inferiority, is understood to be the only req- 
uisite in supplying the American market, and all competition is 
simply narrowed down to a struggle as to who can produce the 
nearest to a worthless article. 

Occasional and meagre exposures of the deceptions and im- 
positions practiced by the manufacturers and purveyors of food 
have been made through the columns of the public press. These 
revelations have awakened a passing local -interest in the subject 
and have, for the time being, been attended with some wholesome 
results. Several of the States and many of the larger cities have 
enacted laws and ordinances intended to reach the evil as a whole 
or suppress the sophistication and corruption of specific articles' 
The latter observation will apply particularly to the article of 
milk. Sanitary considerations have also induced the establish- 
ment in nearly all the larger cities of a system of meat inspection 



3 AN ARGUMENT. 

In some instances these regulations are enforced with more or 
less rigor, but in the great majority of cases they are little more 
than dead letters, affording no protection to the consumer and 
causing no uneasiness to the purveyor. 

Under the protection afforded by the general government to 
inter-state commerce, all state legislation must necessarily prove 
futile and inoperative, only in so far as it affects articles manufac- 
tured and sold within the commonwealth adopting such measures. 
Under a law of Illinois, we very much question, whether a convic- 
tion could be secured, based upon the sale in Chicago, of adulter- 
ated goods manufactured in, and shipped from, the neighboring 
State of Michigan. We are quite certain that confiscation of the 
stuff would be impossible. If the manufacturer, a non-resident 
of Illinois, could, under any pretext, establish a claim upon or in- 
terest in the goods, it would be a very simple matter for him to 
transfer the case to the Federal Courts, where the proceedmgs 
would necessarily end. 

The only method of reaching the evil to check or eradicate it, 
is by national legislation ; the passage of a law, the operation of 
which shall not be restricted either by municipal or state lines. 

Elsewhere we give the text of a bill introduced in the National 
House of Representatives, by Mr. Beale, on the 23d of May, 1879. 
In these pages we also give the full text of the amended adulter- 
ation act of Great Britain. 

The ravages of the fever scourge, which swept over a portion 
of the South in 1878, called into existence a National Board of 
Health This board, in effecting an organization, appointed from 
among its members, a committee on Food Adulteration, of which 
Dr H A.Johnson, of Chicago, was made the chairman,-a gentle- 
man fully qualified to consider the subject in all its relations to 
public health and public morals. But what can we expect from 
this committee or from the National Board in the absence of all 
legislation on the subject? Have we not here the somewhat 
ridiculous picture of a king without an empire, an executive power 
called into existence without a law to execute? With the requisite 



AN ARGUMENT. xi 

legislation, we can readily see how the existing committee of the 
National Board could render most valuable service to the whole 
country. 

Is not the prevailing practice of food sophistication, affecting 
as it does all sections, and invading those regions where no deadly 
malaria poisons the life-giving air, even a greater evil and scourge 
than the dreaded periodical visitant of the South? Are we pre- 
pared to say that its victims are less numerous or its ravages less 
appalling? 

The plague of the South has brought into existence a wise 
enactment by Congress and a board of sanitarians to enforce its 
provisions. Shall the demands of the whole country for legis- 
lation, to protect all sections against as great and ghastly an evil, 
be disregarded? 

With reference to the bill introduced by Mr. Beale, while we 
regard it as defective in not defining in exact terms what shall 
constitute adulteration, what adulterants in common use shall be 
interdicted, and in not requiring all articles of food to be labeled 
and sold for exactly what they are. whether the ingredients be 
harmful or harmless, we should nevertheless hail with pleasure its 
passage as possibly the opening wedge, the initiatory to more 
thorough and comprehensive legislation. 

We are of opinion that the Government should go much fur- 
ther than Mr. Beale proposes to have it go; that public inspectors 
should be appointed, whose duty it should be to exercise a scrutiny 
and surveillance over all manufactories and places where food is 
produced, with power to arrest violators of the law and to seize 
contraband and poisonous material when found upon the premises. 
The true economist can offer no objection to the appointment 
and maintenance of such a sanitary corps. The Government, to 
protect itself against being defrauded of its revenues, employs an 
army of agents, at an expense of many thousands of dollars an- 
nually. Is not the health of a people of greater consideration 
than the revenues? Is there any loss which a nation can suffer 
comparable to that of the health and manhood of its citizens? 



xii AN ARGUMENT. 

Dr. Parkes, an eminent writer upon hygiene, very truthfully 
observes, that " it has been proved over and over again that noth- 
ing is so costly in all ways as disease, and that nothing is so re- 
munerative as the outlay which augments health. " 

Dr. Boardman, in a paper contributed to the Sixth Annual 
Report of the Massachusetts State Board of Health, demonstrated 
that the yearly loss to that commonwealth by preventable sick- 
ness, is considerably more than $3,000,000. How much of this 
sickness and this loss to the State is attributable to the effects of 
impure and adulterated food cannot be stated, but that it is very 
considerable there cannot be a doubt. 

But abandoning all consideration of reinbursement, and rising 
to a higher plane of reasoning, we can but echo the noble sentiment 
of Dr. Wight, of Milwaukee, that "above all material saving, is 
the far higher consideration, the diviner economy of human suffer- 
ing and anguish." 

To the legislator, ambitious of serving his country, to the 
patriot and lover of his fellow men, let us commend the remark 
of Dr. Farr, that " the hope of saving any number of human lives 
is enough to fire the ambition of every good man who believes in 
human progress." 

We will now proceed to the consideration of the articles of 
food most adulterated, after which we will give some attention to 
the causes stimulating the practice, to its moral effects and its 
effect upon the commerce of the country, and also to the responsi- 
bility of the consumer in the premises. 

Before doing this, the writer would gratefully acknowledge 
the assistance rendered him by a number of intelligent and earnest 
co-laborers in this much needed reform, and particularly to Dr. 
R. U. Piper, Dr. T. D. Williams, and Prof. Geo. A. Marriner, of 
Chicago, Dr. O. W. Wight, of Milwaukee, and Mr. Geo. T. Angell, 
the devoted humanitarian of Boston. To the first-named gentle- 
man he is indebted for the entire first chapter of the work, includ- 
ing the original microscopic drawings. 



FOOD ADULTERATION: 

OK, 
-WHAT WE EAT, AND WHAT WE SHOULD EAT. 



CHAPTER I. 
OLEOMARGARINE. 



We are not surprised that the ordinary mind cannot grasp and understand 
so grand a discovery, which is iu direct conflict with the recognized method of 
making butter. — Prof. Mott. 

In the discussion of this substance, which modern ingenuity 
has put forward as an article of food to take the place of butter, 
it may be well, perhaps, in the first place, to set down what its 
producers claim for it, and to give, as far as possible, the authority 
on which their claims are based. When we are informed from 
what may be considered reliable sources, that a single concern in 
a neighboring city manufactures " 40,000 pounds daily," and that 
there are numerous other large establishments of the kind scat- 
tered all over the country, it will be seen how important the sub- 
ject is becoming as a question of health or disease to the entire 
community. 

The most noted champion of the article, Prof. Mott, of New 
York, chemist to the "Commercial (Oleomargarine) Manufactur- 
ing Company" of that city, quoting from a French authority, 
whom he pronounces (as indeed he does all on one side of the 
question) as of the very highest, says that it (oleomargarine) is 
possessed of properties which allow of its close comparison, in a 
chemical point of view, as well as regards its uses, to genuine 



14 OLEOMARGARINE. 

butter, and it may take the place of the latter in many instances, 
and in consequence of the small expense at which it can be made 
it has been put in competition with milk butter, which will lower, 
necessarily, the price of the latter, to the benefit of the con- 
sumer. " 

2. It has been introduced into the East to so great an extent 
" that the great mass of butter made by the old dairy system was 
forced out of the market at a heavy loss to the producer (the 
farmer) and the commission merchant who made his advances." 

3. Further, Prof. Mott says: " Mr. Michejls, of this city, who 
is perfectly incompetent to make a microscopical examination, 
or too dishonest to make a fair one, nevertheless did make one. 
and also published it, and therefore I (Prof. Mott) visited Prof. J. 
W. S. Arnold, Professor of Histology and Microscopy in the Uni- 
versity Medical College of this city, who is acknowledged to be 
one of the leading microscopists of this country, and engaged him 
to make an examination." The samples examined by Prof. Arnold 
were obtained from the Commercial Manufacturing Company by 
the chemist (Prof. M.) himself in person, and given to him. Ran- 
cid butter was also taken at the same time to the professor for 
examination. 

4. Prof. Arnold reports: " I find the oleomargarine butter to 
consist of exceedingly clear and beautiful oil globules, a sufficient 
proof of its purity. " 

" The specimen of rancid butter shows very nicely the granu- 
lar and irregular oil globules characteristic of decomposing fat. I 
send you a series of photo-micrographs of the vartous fats and 
butter examined. The magnifying power equals a four-tenths 
objective and ' A ' eye-piece. " 

5. " Fig. 7, one of these micro-photographs," says the Profes- 
sor, " represents a sample of rancid butter. It will be seen on 
examining this figure that dark black indentations are to be seen 
in most of the globules, showing that decomposition is in progress. 
This decomposition is the first stage of putrefaction," etc. 

6. Prof. A. E. Verrill, A. M. S. B., of Yale College, says: " In 
regard to worms in beef fat, I will state definitely that no such 
instances are known to occur; nor have trichinae been observed, 
either in the fat or flesh, except where the embrvos have been 
purposely fed to the animals before killing them foa experimental 
purposes." 

7. Prof. Wm. H. Brewer, of Yale College, says: "The idea 
that oleomargarine is more dangerous than butter because heated 



OLEOMARGARINE. 15 

to only 120 degrees Fahrenheit, is simply nonsense." Question: 
" Do parasites that could find their way into the human system 
through the use of oleomargarine as food infest the bovine race? " 

Ans. : "If such exist, science has not yet found them; no 
species has yet been described which would be transmitted to 
man in that way." 

Question: " Is not oleomargarine, as made by the Mege 
patent, as wholesome and nutritious as cream butter? " 

Ans.: "So far as chemistry and common sense suggest, 
I will not believe the contrary, unless its actual use demonstrates 
the fact." 

8. Prof. Mott again says: " Fig. 7 (one of the micro-photo- 
graphs of Prof. Arnold made at a magnifying power of 100 or 120 
diameters) represents a sample of rancid butter. It will be seen 
on examining this figure that dark black indentations are to be 
seen in most of the globules, showing that decomposition is in 
progress. This decomposition is the first stage of putrefaction." 
This butter which is decomposed, and afterward putrefied, according 
to Prof. Mott; " when taken internally brings about a general dis- 
order of the system, producing (characterized by?) violent cramp- 
ing and purging, and often setting up putrefaction in the tissues. 
Thi>re can be no doubt that a very large per cent, of the sickness 
among the poorer classes is due to the use of rancid butter." 

9. Prof. G. F. Barker, of the University of Pennsylvania says: 
" In theory, the process should yield a product resembling butter 
in all essential respects, having identically the same fatty constitu- 
ents;" therefore, from the " physiological standpoint," etc., it 
should be " an equivalent for ordinary butter." 

10. From Prof. Henry Morton, Stephens Institute, Hoboken, 
N. J.: "It (oleomargarine) contains nothing whatever that is 
injurious as an article of diet * * but is essentially identical 
with the best fresh butter." 

11. From Prof. Henry Johnson, of Yale College: "Oleomar- 
garine, in chemical composition, differs not in the nature, but only 
in the proportions of its components. 

12. From Prof. S. C. Caldwell, of Cornell University: " Oleo- 
margarine, when properly made, is a perfectly wholesome article 
of food. * * * It contains all the essential ingredients of 
butter." 

13. From Prof. Goessman, of Amherst College, Mass.: 
" Oleomargarine, as made by the Commercial Manufacturing 
Company, is a wholesome article of food." 



16 OLEOMARGARINE. 

14. From Chas. P. Williams, Ph. D.: "Oleomargarine, as 
made by the Mege Patent, is a pure and wholesome article of 
food." 

15. From Prof. Mott, Chemist to the Commercial Manufac- 
turing Company: " I am clearly of the opinion that the product 
called oleomargarine butter is essentially identical with butter 
made from cream." 

1(5. From Prof. J. W. S. Arnold, A. M., M. D., University of 
New York: " Oleomargarine butter differs in no essential manner 
from butter made from cream." 

17. From Prof. W. 0. Atwater, Wesleyan University, Middle- 
ton, Conn.: " Rutterine is perfectly healthful and wholesome, 
and has a high nutritious value." 

It may be proper to remark here that these certificates, be- 
ginning at No. 9 "and ending here, are appended to an advertise- 
ment of the Commercial Manufacturing Company, received with 
the Scientific American of April 29, 1880. I do not mean to convey 
the idea that on this account, or from the fact that they may be 
paid opinions, that they are not given in good faith and with per- 
fect honesty. I object to them as I do to all the other like state- 
ments thus far set forth in this article, that they are totally in- 
competent as testimony, even that low order of testimony some- 
times admitted in the courts, which I have denominated in a re- 
cent legal paper, the "testimony of opinion." 

Could there be anything more absurd for illustration than to 
call upon a chemist to give testimony as an expert in insanity, 
or as to the cause of disease, as Prof. Mott has done, as quoted 
above. And could there be anything more ridiculous or absurd 
than this statement of the Professor that " a large percentage of 
disease among the poorer classes is caused by rancid butter, and, 
still worse, this same butter often sets up putrefaction among the 
tissues " of the human body. 

Of course this statement is nothing but guess-work on the 
part of the chemical professor. One would appeal in vain to the 
entire medical profession for a case of the kind, from any cause 
whatever, which, in the language of the professor, is character- 
ized by the setting up of putrefaction among the tissues. In order 
that the public for which this paper is written may judge of the 
value of the testimony in the case, we must to some extent inves- 
tigate as to the qualifications of the witnesses. 

Thus, Prof. Mott again: " The dark black indentations seen 
in the globules show that decomposition is in progress. This de- 
composition is the first stage of putrefaction." Now " putrefac- 



OLEOMARGARINE. 



17 



tion (according to the authorities) is the change of organic sub- 
stances into new and less complex compounds;" while decompo- 
sition is " the resolution of a substance into its original elements." 
Thus, one of the less complex compounds produced by putrefac- 
tion, for example, sulphurated hydrogen, is b} r decomposition re- 
solved into its original elements, sulphur and hydrogen gas. Fur- 
ther, the oil globules which show these " black indentations" were 
photographed on the wooden block, and engraved as such. Now, 
every person who knows anything about photographing knows 
also that all yellow, orange, and bright red-colored objects photo- 
graph black ("dark black," in the language of the professor), 
hence all such spots in a photograph of the kind would indicate 









Fig. 1. (Pare Butter, Magnified 5G4 Diameters, or 318,000 areas or times.) 

" decomposition the first stage of putrefaction. " As if in making 
a photograph of deep orange-colored butter globules and of bright 
red arterial blood corpuscles, on finding that they appear black 
on the plate, I should declare that this showed " decomposition," 
etc. " 

My readers will fully understand that I am now examining 
(before them as the jury) into the qualifications of expert wit- 
nesses called upon to testify upon a subject of vital importance to 
the health and welfare of the whole community. On the one hand 
are manufacturing companies putting on the market vast quanti- 



18 OLEOMARGARINE. 

ties of a substance which they claim is wholesome food, and 
which claim they seek to sustain by these witnesses, while on the 
other is the public, whose health and comfort is greatly involved 
in the issue. Does the '' expert " whom we have thus far exam- 
ined show the least claim, either by his methods or by his knowl- 
edge of the very methods he makes use of, that his testimony is 
entitled to any kind of credit? 

The nine professors, with the exception of Prof. Arnold, who 
have signed the certificates alluded to are all chemists, and their 
statements in the case may be generalized as follows, in the lan- 
guage of Prof. Brewer, of Yale: " So far as chemistry and com- 
mon sense suggest, I will not believe that oleomargarine made by 
the Mege patent is not as wholesome and nutritious as cream but- 
ter, unless its actual use demonstrates the fact." That is, Prof. 
B. infers, through the evidence of chemistry and common sense, 
that an artificial compound, which he has never tested by experi- 
ence, is a good and wholesome food. And Prof. Barker says " it 
has identically the same fatty constituents, 
therefore, from the physiological standpoint, it 
should be an equivalent for ordinary butter;" that 
is, it should have the same effect when taken into 
the human system. And Prof. Johnson, of Yale, 
says: " In chemical composition it differs not in 
as Fi^iTrtiagiimecl the nature, but only in the proportion of its corn- 
only 141 diameters ponents." Now what of these chemical experts? 
They each and all of them know that there are many sub- 
stances which are chemically precisely alike, which in their effects 
upon the human system are directly opposite to each other, one 
being wholesome, or comparatively innocent, while the other shall 
act as a deadly poison. For illustration, the oils of lemon, orange, 
tolu and savin, etc., are precisely the same chemically, i. e., car- 
bon 10 parts, hydrogen 1C (C. 10, H. 16), but while the first three 
are comparatively harmless substances, the fourth, the oil of 
savin, is an active poison. The works on medical jurisprudence 
give numerous cases of poisoning from this substance, e. g. 
"Woodman & Tidy, page 271; case 2; female, age 21. Symptoms: 
" After a few hours had violent pain and sickness, and then be- 
came insensible. After a time sterterous breathing came on, with 
foaming at the mouth and convulsions. Four hours after she 
gave a low moan and died." Now suppose these chemists, upon 
being called upon to decide upon this oil, having been accustomed 
to know of the free use of the other oils mentioned, shorld declare 




OLEOMARGARINE. 



19 



it " pure and wholesome," what should we say of them? And yet 
this is precisely what they have done. Artificial butter, they say, 
is chemically and microscopically nearly, if not quite, the same as 
natural butter, therefore it is pure and wholesome. Oil of savin 
is chemically and microscopically precisely the same as oils of 
orange and tolu, therefore it is as wholesome as these oils. 

One other of these astute chemists, Prof. Johnson, of Yale, 
says " artificial butter differs from natural butter only in the pro- 
portion of its constituents, therefore it is wholesome," etc. 
Strychnine differs only in the proportion of its elements from 
gluten, which, with starch, is one of the principal substances 
which go to make up wheat flour, and, of course, the bread we 
eat, both substances being made up of carbon, hydrogen, nitro- 




Fig. 3. (Magnified 564 diarnaters, 31S.006 areas or times. This is from a 
specimen of Oleomargarine, bought of a regular dealer aud sold under its 
true name. Here are seen fat and salt crystals, pieces of animal tissue, and 
various suspicious forms.) 

gen and oxygen, thus: gluten (C. 29, H. 40, N. 6, 0. 7). strych- 
nine (C. 23, H. 22, N. 2, O. 2.) Here are the same elements, only 
they exist in varying proportions. What shall we say of this wit- 
ness in court? He says: " I have analyzed gluten, of which our 
bread is partly composed. We all know this is wholesome ; and I 
have also analyzed this substance strychnine, with which the pris- 
oner at the bar has been charged with committing the foul crime 
of murder. He certainly can not be guilty, as this substance is- 
chemically precisely the same, as the wholesome gluten of which 



20 OLEOMARGARINE. 

bread is made, as aforesaid, and only differs in the proportion of 
its elements." And here is precisely the position in which all 
these professors place themselves. They have in no case followed 
out the effect of this new article of food upon the living system of 
man or any of the lower animals. They are none of them physi- 
cians (I do not except the one M. D. of their number) , and have 
not the least claim to give a guess even of the effects of raw, un- 
cooked and so manipulated animal fat upon the human body when 
taken into the stomach. French authorities state that the flesh of 
over-driven animals, when applied raw to the skin, has been known 
to produce dangerous diseases, and that its reception into the human 
stomach has in several instances proved fatal. The writer has 
known one instance in which a strong, healthy young man met 
his death in less than twenty-four hours from this very cause. 
"Who shall say that the Commercial Manufacturing Company, with 
all their care and watchfulness, may not, in the hurry of their 
great business, work up the fat of some such animals into oleo- 
margarine butter? But this part of my subject further on. The 
point I wish to exhibit here is the total incompetency of these wit- 
nesses. They base their testimony wholly upon chemical and 
microscopical analogies. They can not be so ignorant as not to 
be aware of the utter fallacy of such a method of proof, especially 
as it regards the action of any substance on the living animal 
economy. 

I will illustrate still further. There are two kinds of phos- 
phorus, which are so nearly alike as to pass into each other by 
the action of heat. One variety is a fearful poison. The works on 
the subject record hundreds of instances of death from this variety. 
Out of thirty -two cases recorded by Woodman & Tidy, only two 
recoveries are mentioned. The vapor of the substance is also 
very poisonous. This result manifests itself in those persons who 
work in match factories. These authors mention fifty-four cases 
in which the teeth and bones of the jaws were diseased. They 
say: "The general system usually suffers severely, and unless 
the bone exfoliates, or is removed by operation, death is almost 
certain. * * * The evil may be entirely remedied by the use 
of the red phosphorus, instead of the yellow variety, in match- 
making." The reason for its non-use in this manufacture is the 
fact that it is not so sensitive to friction as the other variety. 
" Ordinary phosphorous is very poisonous," says Bloxam, " while 
amorphous phosphorus (another name for the red variety) ap- 
pears to be harmless." Now suppose, for illustration, the red 



OLEOMARGARINE. 



21 



variety had been first discovered, and had passed into use, as 
now, for matches, etc. No children would have been killed by 
sucking these matches, as is now frequently the case; no work- 




Fig. 4. (Magnified 5(J4 diameters. This specimen was obtained at a respec 
table eating-house in Chicago. The cut is made up of drawings from several 
successive examinations. When placed upon the slide in the first place, shreds 
of animal tissue, salt and fat crystals, and spores were seen, and also a peculiar 
form which I have frequently met with in foul water. The other objects, many 
of which were active, living forms, together with the fungi, were obtained after 
the stuff had been boiled in distilled water in a test tube and allowed to stand 
over night. On cooling, the top of the fluid was covered with a coating of 
grease. Through this cover, which of course was impervious to outward float- 
ing organisms, the pipette was thrust and the specimen thus obtained. Many 
of these forms are such as are present in all putrefying animal matter, while 
others are, perhaps, the bacteria of special diseases, or morbid changes in the 
animal tissue.) 



22 OLEOJIAKGARINE. 

men would have been poisoned in their manufacture. Now conies 
the yellow variety, and it is submitted to our chemists for exam- 
ination. They all find it to be chemically the same as the first. 
In scientific language, they pronounce it to be isomeric with it, 
and Prof. Brewer, as spokesman, on being asked whether it is 
poisonous or not; replies so far as chemistry and common sense 
suggest: "I will not believe that it is not as innocent as the 
other." Or, in the language of Chas. P. Williams, Ph. D., oleo- 
margarine, "in its chemical composition, is fully the equivalent of 
the best quality of dairy butter." He precedes this with " From 
my knowledge of its composition I am satisfied that it is a pure 
and wholesome article of food. " It is but fair to state that all 
these certificates are based upon the examination of specimens of 
the stuff obtained from a single company — the Commercial Manu- 
facturing Company, of New York city. Now, as I have said be- 
fore, these experts could have no standing in any court of justice. 
Their so-called opinions are worse than guesses, as they are based 
on analogies which would not justify conclusions; only theories as 
to the action of inorganic bodies upon each other, much less of 
the action of any class of bodies upon the living animal system. 

Prof. Brewer, of Yale, I have quoted as saying: " The idea 
that oleomargarine is more dangerous than butter, because heated 
to only 120 degrees Fahrenheit, is simply nonsense." This means 
that raw animal fat, no matter what organisms it may chance to 
contain, is as wholesome as butter. A physician in this city in- 
forms the writer that he has had four cases of tape-worm recently 
produced from eating raw beef. Dr. Cobold says that this species 
of tape-worm is as common in England as the taenia solium, the 
one produced by eating raw pork. But it will be said that the 
cysticercus from which this worm is produced is not found in the 
fat of the ox. This is by no means proven. The larvae of one 
species is found in the fat of the swine; why not in the fat of the 
ox? Admit this statement to be true, however, still the fat is in 
very near proximity to the lean, and some of these larvae might 
be dislodged from their cells in the process of separating the two 
kinds of flesh, and thus get mixed with the fat; or a portion of the 
lean might be so dislodged, and carry with it some of these cysti- 
oerci. I have in my possession at the present time slides of oleo- 
margarine on which specimens of lean meat may be seen suffi- 
cient, if the proportion in which they were found should continue 
through the entire package, to populate a nation. These speci- 
mens are from a firkin of this artificial butter sent to the editors of 
the Western Rural, of this city, and by them furnished to me. 



OLEOMARGARINE. 23 

Suppose, again, some of the wormlike bodies found in cattle 
plague, which Real tells us are sometimes met with in small num- 
bers in animals which are perfectly healthy, should chance to get 
into this raw-meat butter. These, he says, are sometimes found 
free, so that there would be no mechanical difficulty in the way of 
their migration. Another small, worm-like body is described by 
Parke (Manual of Hygiene, p. 212), which is found in the sheath 
of the muscles, from which it of course would be dislodged in the 
process of dressing the animal. He says they " are produced in 
enormous quantities in the flesh of domestic animals — oxen, sheep 
and pis:s. They have been known to produce sudden death in 
sheep, and paralysis in the hind legs of hogs." 

He adds: " It is by no means improbable that some effect on 
man may be hereafter discovered to be produced " by these so- 
called psorospermia. 

Woodman & Tidy (Forensic Medicine, p. 573) give an account 
of the echinococus which is found in the sheep and the ox, from 
whence it is conveyed to the human system. Dr. Leared says 
that one out of every five deaths among the people of Iceland is 
caused by it. In the ox it is found in the peritoneal cavity, the 
very region from whence the Commercial Manufacturing Com- 
pany claim that they get the animal fat from which they make 
their precious compound, which, according to Prof. Arnold, A. ML, 
M. D., " is a blessing to the poor," and is even better than natural 
butter in one respect, that is, in keeping qualities. 

The authors just quoted say good cooking is the only safe- 
guard against this and other like so-called worms which infest 
animals used for food. They add emphatically, " Raw meat should 
never be eaten." Prof. Rrewer, of Yale, and all the other learned 
chemists quoted, declare in effect that this is " simply nonsense." 
Raw-meat butter " is as pure, as good, as nutritious, as excellent, 
as desirable, as satisfactory, as attractive, as wholesome, as sweet, 
as cream butter. It is a grand discovery, so grand that the 
ordinary mind can not grasp and understand it;" and, finally, " it 
is a great blessing to the poor." 

Mr. Michells, of New York, who has shown by his published 
writings on the subject full competency as a scientific man to deal 
with it, says that after a long series of examinations he has come 
to the conclusion that oleomargarine made after the Mege patent 
is not a safe article of food — it is nothing but raw fat liquified, 
scented, calored and flavored to give it a spurious appearance of 
butter — and that those that use it run the risk of trichina? from the 



24- OLEOMARGARINE. 

stomachs of pigs chopped up with the fat, and that infection from 
certain contagious diseases which are common to man and the 
domestic animals might follow Further, he says the temperature 
(120 degrees Fahrenheit) to which the substance is exposed in the 
process of manufacture is totally insufficient to kill the embryos 
of parasites or destroy the germs of disease which exist in a very 
large proportion of domestic animals used for food. And that he 
has found portions of tissue and muscle in oleomargarine, and 
that others (Mr. Saylor) have positively identified germs of dis- 
ease in that substance. Mr. Michells is fully sustained in his 
opinion by the Rev. W. H. Dallinger, the English naturalist, who 
is certainly the greatest living authority upon the subject, who, in 
a letter to Mr. Michells, says the germs of the whole septic series 
of organisms require a temperature of at least 212 to 235 degrees 
Fahrenheit for their destruction in fluid. " Quite as serious a 
matter is that of the introduction into the human intestinal track, 
through the means of oleomargarine, of eggs of entozoa." 

In closing his letter, he says; " This is an important matter, 
and although likely to be in practice neglected at first by the pub- 
lic, may probably impress itself upon them in an unwelcome man- 
ner in the future." 

Rev. E. Huber, the Richmond, Va.. microscopist, says, in the 
Southern Clinic for May 1880, oleomargarine differs in its micro- 
scopical appearance, as well as in its nutritive and dietetic qualities, 
from natural butter. * * * " The fat is not subjected to a heat 
sufficient to destroy the germs of septic and putrefactive organ- 
isms. * * * There may be also introduced into the system by 
its means the echinococci, which develope in tape-worms." 

If we go over some of the certificates of the chemical profes- 
sors, it will be seen that they seem purposely so worded as to 
convey a false idea. Thus, Prof. Brewer: " Science has not found 
in the bovine race parasites which could get into the human sys- 
tem through oleomargarine." Further, " This substance, as made 
by the Mege patent, is as wholesome as cream butter." To re- 
peat, we must keep in view all the time that raw fat is as " whole- 
some as cream butter." Suppose it should chance to be so that 
no "worm," etc., is to be found in beef fat, and therefore they 
could not " get into the human system through oleomargarine," of 
what consequence is all this, provided the same purpose is accom- 
plished through the process of manufacture. By the Mege patent, 
as we have seen, the stomachs of pigs and sheep are used, chopped 
up with the beef fat. Could not the trichinae get into the false 



OLEOMARGARINE. 



25 



butter through this process, and hence into the human system? 
Mr. Michells tells us it could. "Woodman & Tidy (p. 462) say that 
the ova of the " worm " lies in the stomach of the pig or other ani- 
mal from six to eight days before they are completely developed, 
while three or four more are consumed, when " each female will 



A 



-'-* ■■'■■ v '^i' 1 ^ 1 
■ Ml ,n!-:,':,i|l' :i .'.',[ 




Fig. 5. (Magnified 358 diameters, 126,025 times, is from a specimen of oleo- 
margarine, furnished as I have said by the Commercial Manufacturing Company ; 
the one so certified to as making a perfectly pure and wholesome article. A few 
bacteria, and fungi, may be seen in the specimen. The mass on the left looked 
like a bunch of orange-colored jelly. The next broad mass is muscalar fibre. It 
was red in color, and would have photographed black, as would also the jelly 
like substance. There is, in addition, a mass of fat crystals, as also pieces of 
cotton fibre. I have found many pieces of muscular fibre in the various speci- 
mens of oleomargarine I have examined.) 

give life to over one hundred young ones." The worms then begin 
to bore their way through the walls of the stomach into the 
muscles. It is certainly not unreasonable to suppose that during 
the ten or twelve days of time that the germs, etc., require in 



26 OLEOMARGARINE. 

order to be developed, that some of the animals might be brought 
to the shambles, and that one of these so populated stomachs 
might get chopped up with the fat, and even if they were carefully- 
washed and cleaned before using, still thousands of the little crea- 
tures might remain in the walls of the organ. It will be remem- 
bered that these parasites, in all their stages of development, are 
wonderfully tenacious of life. The authorities tell us that " they 
are not destroyed by salt, by smoke, or, indeed, by putrefaction. 
Thorough cooking, however, kills them, and for this reason all 
meat for the table should be well done." 

But this exposition of our liability to diseases from eating raw 
grease of one description does not by any means give a full idea 
of the danger to which the public are exposed from the use of the 
article which I have been discussing. 

Mr. Miehells tells us that " there can be no doubt that fats and 
grease of every description are used to make oleomargarine, be- 
cause all the caul-fat of oxen brought to New York city in a week 
would not be sufficient for one factory for four days, and there are 
seven oleomargarine factories in the city." Rev. E. Huber, whom 
we have quoted before, says that the gentleman in Richmond who 
had the first agency for the sale of the article has found it so bad 
of late that " he has given it up in disgust;" and a paper in New 
York has published a cartoon showing persons in the act of col- 
lecting dead dogs and horses from the streets for the use of the 
oleomargarine factories, while "Prof. Mud" is giving a certificate 
in the following words: 

" I have examined your articles with a powerful microscope, 
and can find nothing deletereous in them. " 

Prof. Mud, Analytical Chemist. 

It will be remembered by my readers that the microscope is 
an instrument which, like magnifying spectacles, enables us to see 
objects which are invisible to the unaided eye. The power is 
reckoned by diameters, that is we see the surface of an object un- 
der the instrument just as many times long and broad as it is 
magnified in diameters. Therefore the number of diameters in a 
given case multiplied into itself gives the area or number of times 
the surface of the object is increased in size. Thus an object 
which is one-tenth of an inch square, on being magnified ten diam- 
eters would appear one hundred times as large as it really is, or 
would cover a space one inch square. For this reason many of 
the objects which are clearly shown in my drawings would not be 
seen at all if only magnified as high as Prof. Arnold's micro-photo- 



OLEOMARGARINE. 



27 



graphs (on which Prof. Mott has based all his statements as it re- 
gaids the testimony of the microscope in the subject under dis- 
cussion) . None of the spores or bacteria would be brought into 
view at all, and " Prof. Mud " might well give his certificate as 
above. 




Fig. (5. (Is also from a specimen of tbe Commercial Manufacturing Compa- 
ny's production. The nine forms at the bottom of the picture are from cases ot 
tape worm occurring in the practice of physicians in this city. The others, as 
I have said, are from oleomargarine as above.) 

This is a most important matter for the public to fully under- 
stand, as through the agency of this man, Prof. Mott, nearly all 
the literature favorable to this fraudulent manufacture has been 
produced, and all the so-called scientific data on which it is based 



28 OLEOMARGARINE. 

might fairly be judged of, from his published statements and his 
application of the microscopic investigations in the case. 
" Falsus in unarn falsus in omnibus." 

Prof. Arnold says " the magnifying power (used in making 
the micro-photographs to which we refer) equals a four-tenths ob- 
jective and 'A' eye-piece." The Messrs. Beck, the microscope 
manufacturers, set down the magnifying power of a four-tenths 
objective and " A " eye-piece as equal to 120 diameters, with the 
highest angle of aperture 146 diameters; Messrs. Powell and Le- 
land 125 diameters. Thus it will be seen that all the conclusions 
based upon such data are entirely deceptive, and seem, to say the 
least, to be based upon fraud. Are not these men aware, one a 
professor of physiology and histology in a great public institution, 
that this power would not suffice to show hundreds of objects a 
higher power would reveal; much less would this low power enable 
one to settle any one of the facts they claim to settle by its means. 
The whole of Fig. 6, if compressed to 150 diameters, would not 
occupy the space of a square drawn round the group of four forms 
which touch one another on the left-hand lower corner of the 
figure. Reduce the other figures in the same proportion, and the 
largest of them will be crowded into a space of one inch by seven- 
tenths, and of course all the smaller objects would entirely disap- 
pear. Now let us think of these plates once reduced, or rather of 
the whole microscopic field under no higher power than this, and 
a professor of physiology and histology deciding upon a question 
of vital importance to the health and welfare of the people upon 
such slight grounds. 

Mr. Michells says, in closing his article upon the subject, that 
he was told by the editor in chief of the New York Times, in 
which the last paper I have quoted from appeared, that this paper 
to which Dr. Mott had signed his name, and which contained the 
names of Profs. Arnold, Brewer, Verrill, etal., was nothing but 
an advertisement, and that quite a large sum of money was paid 
for its insertion, in fact, thousands of dollars, and that therefore 
no reply would be permitted to him. 

I close by quoting from a former article of mine published in 
the Western Rural: 

The saddest thing in all this, however, is not, in the words of 
Mr. Michells, that " honored names and great public institutions 
can thus be used to advertise a grease factory, " for this might at 
least be an innocent business, but that men occupying positions at 
the head of such institutions could be hired, or in any other way 



OLEOMABGAHINE. 29 

be induced, to lend their names to help palm off a fraud upon the 
community. Even if the article is sold under its true name, still 
it is a fraud, in the fact that it is made to resemble butter, when 
it is nothing but raw fat, with the worms, eggs, etc., which may 
have originally belonged to it, together with those which may 
chance to get into it in the process of manufacture, and also the 
substances with which it is colored and flavored. One other fact 
ought to be mentioned here — the fat which is used in a given case 
may chance to come from animals which are diseased, and the 
stomach, also, may be in a like condition. Now, if used as butter, 
the stuff would go into the human stomach in most instances in a 
raw state, and might, under this condition, be very dangerous, 
which danger would probably be obviated in most cases by cook- 
ing. Trichinous meat, as is well known, is thus rendered harmless. 

Are the eggs as shown in Fig. 6, the eggs of the tape-worm? 
And if not, what are they? I have several slides of these eggs. 

Could they not have very easily got into the oleomargarine 
by way of the pigs' stomachs? These eggs, Prof. Benedin tells 
us, "are surrounded by membranes and shells," which are diges- 
ted after a certain time in the stomach of the pig, and the eggs set 
at liberty. " These next lose their shells by the action of the gastric 
juice, and the embryos now begin their work of boring into the 
walls of the stomach. Surely here is ample time, while ail this 
process is going on, for the pig to get killed and the stomach to be 
worked up or used in the process of making the fraudulent butter. 
What then? The egg got into the human stomach through the 
oleomargarine, or in any other manner, does not become a tape- 
worm, but developes into a far more dangerous form of worm, 
called cysticerci. Benedin says an egg of the tape-worm (taenia 
solium) sometimes gets into the human stomach, where it is 
hatched precisely in the same manner as in the stomach of the 
pig. It finds its way into some enclosed cavity. " Some have 
been found in the eye-ball, in the lobes of the brain, in the heart, or 
in the muscles. " He mentions the case of a man whose death was 
caused by these " wandering worms. " At the post mortem cysti- 
cerci were found to occupy a spot near the commissure of the optic 
nerves. " One of these was alive, the others calcified. " Two others 
occupied a lobe of the brain. 

It is said, with how much of truth I do not know, that cheese 
is being adulterated with this stuff— oleomargarine. If this be the 
fact, the public should be warned of the danger. Under the cir- 
cumstances, I can, of course, merely direct attention to the state- 



30 



OLEOMARGARINE 



ment. And in this connection I would add that if it should chance 
to be true, as quite likely is the fact, that genuine butter, if bad 
in quality, is dangerous to health, that this is no ground for con- 
cluding that raw fat, scented and colored, etc., i. e., oleomar- 
garine, is " a pure and wholesome article of food." 

At least, genuine butter, however bad, can not contain the 
eggs or larvee of trichinae or the tape- worm, etc., and can not by 
any process be produced out of the fat of diseased and putrefying 
animals 

Chicago, June 12, 1880. 

Since the above was put in type I have received specimens of 
eggs of some sort found in oleomargarine and kindly sent me by 
the Rev. E. Huber, of Richmond, Va., quoted before. Mr. Huber 
has frequently found these eggs in specimens of the fraudulent 











R.U.:P!=ER, JUNE |2 1880. 

Fig, 7. (A. From oleomargarine. B B. Nine tape worm eggs.) 

butter. They resemble those in my plate so closely that at least 
they must be a very nearly allied species. Thus it will be seen 
that these eggs are by no means accidental findings, but that they 
exist by thousands in the precious stuff. We are told by some of 
our eminent chemists that " oleomargarine butter is a great bless- 
ing to the poor." Certainly not, we should think, if their stomachs 
are to become by this means the receptacle of these eggs, which 
are destined to hatch into worms, whose final business is, as we 
are informed, to take up their residence in the heart, brain, etc., 
of the blessed recipient. R. U. Piper, M. D. 



MILK, BUTTER AND CHEESE. 31 



CHAPTER II. 
MILK, BUTTER AND CHEESE. 



The substance which modern ingenuity has devised as a sub- 
stitute fDr butter having been fully discussed in the preceding 
chapter, we will proceed to the brief consideration of the article 
of butter itself. Before doing this, however, it is proper that we 
should first give attention to the fluid from which butter is pro- 
duced, and which, besides its use in the production of both butter 
and cheese, is a staple article of diet, and particularly of the diet 
of the young. 

The milk supply of larger cities is a subject which has re- 
ceived much attention in our own country, as well as in Europe, 
and the most constant watchfulness on the part of the municipal 
health officer has been found necessary to prevent its reduction 
and impoverishment with water, as well as its contamination with 
foreign substances. In spite of this vigilance there can be no 
doubt that much of the milk supplied to the city consumer is not 
only fraudulent, but unfit for food. 

The investigation of this subject by the writer, though neces- 
sarily local, would no doubt have developed only similar results if 
extended to any number of the larger cities of the country. 

We will first consider the adulterations practiced simply in the 
light of a fraud. Numerous estimates have been made of the 
average daily consumption of milk per capita in various sections 
of the country. It is entirely safe to say that every 100,000 in- 
habitants of large cities consume at least 17,000 quarts of milk per 
day. Dr. Wight, the really accomplished and efficient Health 
Commissioner of Milwaukee, places the daily consumption in that 
city, which has a population of a little more than J 00,000, at 17,014 
quarts. Putting the average price at 5 cents per quart, it will be 



32 



MILK, BUTTEE AND CHEESE. 



seen, then, that the milk supply of Milwaukee, for instance, costs 
about $850 per day, or $310,505 per year. Now, suppose that the 
adulteration or watering of this milk amounts to only 10 per cent, 
(and we have found it carried as high even as 30 per cent.) , and 
the fraud perpetrated upon the milk consumers of Milwaukee 
would aggregate over $31,000 yearly. 

But this loss in dollars and cents is nothing when we consider 
the loss of health that may result from the adulteration or con- 







o 




riff. i. 
tamination of an article so generally and largely consumed. Dr. 
Wight, whose figures we have seen fit to adopt, very truthfully 
observes: " If any considerable portion of the milk thus sold 
should be rendered unwholesome by filthy stables, unhealthy 
cows, uncleanly surroundings, etc., none but Heaven could meas- 
ure the sickness and suffering, or record the deaths thereby caused 
among children in the various households of the city. Against 
such considerations no fictitious ' personal liberty ' to be nasty, 
no spurious ' freedom of trade ' to supply the people with adulter- 
ated and polluted food, can stand a moment." 



MILK, BUTTER AND CHEESE. 



33 



In considering the purity and wholesomeness of milk it is 
primarily important that we should take cognizance of the stables 
in which the cattle are housed, the character of the food supplied 
to them, as well as the hands and the atmospheres through which 
it passes on its way from the dairymen to the consumer. A writer 
in the British Medical Journal observes: " Now that milk has 
been so repeatedly and abundantly proved to be a source of epi- 
demic disease, by reason of its imbibition of poisonous gases or 
contamination by polluted water, or at the hands of infected per- 
sons in dwelling-houses or rooms connected with dairies, it would 
be very satisfactory to know that stringent use was being made of 
recent enactments aiming at the separation of dairies from dwell- 
ing-houses, and the enforcement of precautions necessary for 




Fig. 2. 

ensuring the safeguarding of this necessary of life on its way from 
the cow to the kitchen. This desideratum, however, appears to 
be still far from general realization. Mr. Corner gives, in his last 
report, two striking examples of what may occur for want of due 
sanitary inspection of dairies. In one ease, the milk was stored 
and retailed in a yard where it was exposed to offensive gases; in 
another, the body of a child who had died from scarlet fever was 
found in the house of a dairyman, neither coffined nor disinfected, 
and the mother had attended both on the child and on her cus- 
tomers during the several davs of her child's illness. Under an 



34 MILK, BUTTEK AND CHEESE. 

adequate system of inspection, whether private or public, such 
dangers would be prevented." 

Dr. George Wilson, a distinguished sanitary writer, says: 
" The greatest danger attaching to milk, as a carrier of disease, 
depends upon its remarkable powers of absorption and the rapid 
fermentive or zymotic changes it undergoes when it becomes 
mixed with putrefying matter, or tainted with disease germs. 
There is now an overwhelming amount of evidence which proves, 
beyond dispute, that milk is largely instrumental in propagating 
scarletina and enteric fever." 

After quoting from the above authority, Dr. Wight, in his last 
annual report, writes: " The very essence of dung, saturating the 
atmosphere of stinking stables, the poisonous vapors of organic 
decay, the floating contagia of scarlet fever, diphtheria, small-pox 
and other infectious diseases, are all rapidly absorbed by milk, as 
a sponge takes up water, and may be conveyed to the mouths of 
innocent children or unsuspecting adults. When cows become 
unhealthy by being confined for several months in close, dark, un- 
ventilated stables, their milk undergoes vital changes, which 
chemistry can not detect, which the microscope does not reveal, 
which the senses fail to discover, making it unwholesome. No 
person should be allowed by public authority to sell to the people 
an article of diet so delicate as milk, of such universal use, except 
under conditions that shall reasonably guarantee its cleanliness 
and its freedom from every form of poison. " 

The feeding of cattle upon the refuse or slops from distilleries 
and breweries is a subject which has received frequent attention 
in the daily press, as well as in the illustrated publications of the 
country. It is only necessary that we should refer to the practice 
to condemn it. The effect of this unnatural feeding, both upon the 
milk drawn from cows and upon the flesh of cattle killed for food, 
is striking and unmistakable. While chemical tests have failed to 
detect any difference in the milk of the swill-fed cow and the cow 
which selects its natural food in the pasture, the microscope does 
not thus fail. Dr. Piper, who, in conducting a recent investigation 
of the milk supply of Chicago, made over five hundred microscopic 
examinations, says: ""With the microscope w r e can distinguish 
with absolute certainty between milk produced from normal food 
and that from the whisky -poisoned leavings of the distillery and 
the brewery." We give two drawings which sufficiently illustrate 
this fact. In Fig. 1, which represents a pure, undiseased and 
clean milk, the corpuscles will be found circular in form and regu- 



MILK, BUTTER AND CHEESE. 35 

lar in outline, while in Fig. 2, drawn from a specimen of swill-milk, 
quite the reverse will be found to be the case. 

How much the lack of proper exercise and the requisite 
amount of pure air may have to do with diseasing the flesh and 
contaminating the milk of cattle crowded together in the con- 
tracted and unventilated distillery sheds it is difficult to determine. 
That it contributes to this result in no small degree there can 
hardly be a doubt. Meercker, a distinguished German authority, 
gives 1,059, 1,412 and 1,765 cubic feet of air per hour as necessary 
for cattle of different sizes; and Dr. Parkes says: " In cow-houses 
disease and health are in the direct proportion of foul and pure 
air. " In the cattle sheds of only one distillery (the extensive dis- 
tillery of Henry H. Shufeldt & Co.), out of the large number 
visited by the writer in and about Chicago, was there manifest,any 
regard whatever for ventilation. 

But leaving the surroundings of milk-giving cattle and the 
food supplied them entirely out of the question, and presuming 
that the milk as it leaves the cow is quite pure and wholesome, 
and yet we have no guarantee that it will reach us through the 
ordinary channels of supply in its pure and natural state. Out of 
several hundred samples examined by us during the preparation 
of this work we have found but very few, almost too few to men- 
tion, which had not been in some manner tampered with. The 
most common methods of defrauding the consumer are by remov- 
ing the cream, adding water and mixing old and new milk to- 
gether. 

Dr. Hassall mentions having found even as high as 50 per 
cent, of water added to London milk. We have found as much as 
30 per cent., and very frequently 20 and even 25 per cent. 

The theft of the cream from milk is quite as common a prac- 
tice as the addition of water. There is generally from two to 
three quarts of cream skimmed from each can of eight gallons. 

The addition of water in large quantities has the effect of 
changing the appearance of milk, as well as reducing its flavor. 
Other adulterations are therefore resorted to to conceal the other- 
wise apparent fraud. Sugar is added to restore the lost sweet- 
ness, salt is often added to bring out the flavor, and coloring matter 
is necessarily added to restore the appearance. For coloring we 
have found annatto, turmeric, and occasionally other substances 
used. Chalk and starch, are also common adulterants, and cere- 
bral matter is likewise occasionally introduced, as well as gum 
and dextrin. 



36 MILK, BUTTER AND CHEESE. 

Carbonate of soda is freely used by milk dealers to prevent 
milk from souring — about a tablespoonful being added to each 
can. Milk which has already commenced to sour is also treated 
with sugar and carbonate of soda by which it is restored to a sala- 
ble condition. When skimmed milk is mixed with fresh milk soda 
is almost always used. 

Though water may at first thought seem the most harmless 
adulterant that can be added to milk, or to any article of food or 
drink, it should be borne in mind that water itself may be impure 
and unwholesome, and whatever impurities or disease germs it may 
contain are readily transferred to and retained in the milk. 

We may illustrate the extent to which it is possible to carry 
the fabrication of milk by stating that Dr. T. D. Williams, envious, 
perhaps, of the necromantic skill of Chicago milkmen, recently 
prepared a compound which, though no element of it was derived 
from the cow, was so deceptive, both to the eye and the palate, as 
to be pronounced by a neighbor a rich and choice sample of lacteal 
fluid. 

We have often found cream to be largely adulterated with 
gums. 

In New York and St. Louis the sale of swill-milk is prohibited 
by law; in nearly every large city ordinances are in existence 
against the reduction and adulteration of milk, and it is a severe 
commentary upon our system of local government that in the face 
of these enactments a really pure and wholesome milk is an excep- 
tion rather than the rule. A rigid national law, strictly and hon- 
estly enforced by competent health officials, might reach the root 
of the evil. 

Much that we have observed with reference to the effect of 
filthy and infected stables and dairies upon milk will apply also to 
butter. The hands that manipulate any article of food should at 
least be clean. That they are not always clean, nor yet free from 
disease, is the logical result of the total lack of inspection of the 
dairy, in common with every other source and surrounding of our 
food supply, as well as the methods and processes of its manufac- 
ture and preparation. 

Besides its being frequently contaminated with filth, butter is 
sometimes grossly adulterated. The adulterants used are water, 
starch, curd, animal fat and coloring substances. 

It has been demonstrated that even 50 per cent, of water can 
be incorporated with butter, though adulteration to this extent 
has probably never occurred. The introduction of water is effected 



MILK, BUTTER AND CHEESE. 37 

by bringing the butter to the melting point and stirring in water 
and salt until the mixture becomes cold. 

The fat of beef, mutton, veal and lard are all more or less 
used in different sections of the country, the last-named beingithe 
most common, particularly as an adulterant of low grades of 
butter. 

In our investigation we have discovered, among other color- 
ing substances, burnt sugar, turmeric, annatto, the juice of carrots 
and saffron. As annatto is itself adulterated sometimes with red 
lead, its use is never safe. 

The art of working over, deodorizing and rendering palatable 
old and rancid butter has been thoroughly studied and quite ex- 
tensively practiced. This rejuvenated product of the churn, how- 
ever, has found, in the last few years, a formidable rival in oleo- 
margarine. 

The adulterations of cheese are very similar to those of butter, 
so far as coloring substances are concerned. Herbs are also added 
in some dairies to impart flavor. But the more fraudulent adul- 
teration is with starch and flour, which are often added in consid- 
erable quantity, to give bulk and weight. 



38 FLOUR. 



CnAPTEE III. 
FLOUR. 



In its generic sense the term flour would apply to almost any 
ground seed or grain. Our purpose in the present chapter, how- 
ever, is only to consider the meal or powder obtained bj T the 
grinding of wheat, oats, rye and corn, and more particularly the 
first-named grain. In fact, in using the general term flour, we 
wish to be understood as meaning wheat flour. Our allusions to 
other products of the mill will be made under their specific names, 
as rye flour, oatmeal, etc. 

In considering the article of flour it is first necessary that we 
should recognize its distinct classification into what are known as 
spring-wheat flour and winter-wheat flour, and to point out the 
marked difference in the general characteristics of the two. 

Spring-wheat flour is characterized by a preponderance of 
the glutinous over the starchy element, while, on the other hand, 
winter-wheat flour contains much more starch and mrch less 
gluten. These distinctions are also affected— rendered more or 
less marked — by the peculiarities of the seasons in which the grain 
is grown and harvested. Thus, what is known as a wet harvest 
is attended with a marked increase of gluten in the grain, while a 
dry harvest develops more starch. The preponderance of gluten 
in the grain has the effect of rendering the flour dark-colored. A 
very white flour is, on the other hand, always a starchy flour. 
Moisture likewise has the effect of turning flour dark, and either a 
damp or a damaged flour is always of a dark color. 

It is quite necessary that we should understand the foregoing 
facts before we consider the processes and agents employed in 
the manipulating or " doctoring " of flour, so as to render a dark 
flour light, and even to conceal the character of flour that is dam- 
aged. 



FLOUR. 39 

Though the flours containing the larger percentage of gluten 
are more valuable as food, the gluten being the nutritious element 
of the grain, the public too frequently consults the eye instead of 
the stomach, and allows itself to be guided by appearance, without 
regard to quality. Thus the flours which contain the least gluten 
and the most starch are preferred, for the simple reason that they 
produce the prettiest bread — the whitest loaf. And to gratify this 
foolish popular whim the miller exhausts his ingenuity to produce 
a white flour, while the baker frequently resorts to the use of 
absolutely poisonous adulterants to produce a white bread. 

Another popular fallacy also exists in the idea that a starchy 
flour will make more bread. The writer himself has more than 
once heard it remarked by the housekeeper that " a good flour 
(meaning a white, starchy flour) goes further." Starch will take 
up and retain more moisture than gluten will, hence the reason 
why a starchy flour " goes further." More bread, it will be seen, 
simply signifies more water. This the bakers fully understand. 
The greater the amount of water that can be introduced and held 
in the loaf, the greater their profits. 

We have taken considerable pains to ascertain the extent to 
which flour is adulterated by American millers, and the result of 
our investigations is highly gratifying, in that it shows the very 
rare use of harmful agents to change the character or improve the 
appearance of their pi'oducts. 

In England the adulteration of flour was at one time carried 
on to a very great extent. This was done by the introduction of 
the flours of cheaper grains, such as rice, rye, barley ; and corn, 
as also the flour of the bean and potato. Alum and carbonate of 
soda were also used as mineral adulterants, and Dr. Hassall men- 
tions, likewise, mineral white, or hydrated sulphate of lime, silicate 
of alumina, or China clay, bone ashes and bone dust, terra alba 
and chalk. 

In our own country, where wheat is both abundant and cheap, 
where the harvest is unfailing, and where most of the flour is pro- 
duced in mills located in the immediate vicinity of boundless grain 
fields, we are gratified to say that the adulteration of flour by the 
miller is of much less frequent occurrence. In only one sample 
out of a great number examined by us have we found alum, and in 
only three have we found terra alba, clay and ground peas. 

In a very large number of samples of low-grade flour we have 
detected the presence of the meal or flour of corn, it generally 
being present to the extent of five per cent. This, we learn from 



40 FLOUR. 

the millers, is added to the lower or darker grades, to render them 
whiter, an effect which it readily accomplishes. 

"While the public escapes poisoning at the hands of the miller, 
there are other hands through which the flour passes before it 
reaches the consumer, which are by no means so innocent of the 
crime. The mixers of flour and the baker require our attention, 
and the various agents employed by them to produce a white 
bread and an attractive cake will be duly considered in out next 
chapter. 

An article of comparatively recent manufacture, known as 
" patent flour " is deserving of mention. It is a well-established 
fact that the hull of the wheat kernal contains some of the most 
valuable constituents of the grain. According to Dr. Hassall it 
contains a large amount of nitrogenous matter, including the very 
important principal, cerealin, as also much oily matter. "What 
were generally sold as the finer grades of flour in the past were 
flours from which this hull or bran was entirely sifted. The im- 
proved or patent flour is characterized by having this most impor- 
tant and valuable element restored to it. 

A number of samples of rye and buckwheat flours have been 
examined by us, in none of which have we found any foreign ele- 
ment, though we are not prepared to say that they are not some- 
times adulterated. A friend in New York writes us that he has, 
with the aid of the microscope, discovered in both of these flours 
the presence of the flour of damaged peas. 

Oatmeal, the nutritious value of which has long been recog- 
nized in Great Britain, has rapidly come into favor as an article of 
diet in our own country within the past few years. It is generally 
produced by crushing the grain, though an excellent aiticle has 
been submitted to us which was cut by a patented process, and 
which was not only very clean, but quite free from the dust or 
flour of the grain. All the samples of this article examined by us 
were found to be entirely pure and made from sound and whole- 
some grain. 

Prof. Forbes, of Edinburgh, during some twenty years, meas- 
ured the breadth and height, and also tested the strength, of both 
the arms and loins of the students in the University, a very numer- 
ous class, and of various nationalities. He found that in height, 
breadth of shoulders, and strength of arms and loins, the Belgians 
were at the bottom of the list, a little above them the French, very 
much higher the English, and highest of all the Scotch and Scotch 
Irish from Ulster, who, like the natives of Scotland, are fed in 



FLOUK. 41 

their early years with at least one meal a day of good oatmeal 
porridge. 

The article known as self-raising flour requires our attention. 
Both a wheat and buckwheat self-raising flour are extensively sold, 
and both are liable to be manufactured from a low grade of flour, 
as well as to be contaminated with dangerous and unwholesome 
adulterants. Six samples of each have been examined by us, with 
the following result: 

In three out of the six samples of self-raising wheat flour 
alum was found and the flour was of a very low grade. 

In one sample a very low grade of flour was found, though no 
alum was present. 

In two samples a high grade of flour was found, with acid 
phosphates and soda as raising agents — both entirely harmless. 

In one sample of the buckwheat flour alum was found. 



42 BREAD AND ITS INGREDIENTS. 



CHAPTER IV. 
BREAD AND ITS INGREDIENTS. 



A thorough investigation of the subject of flour and its uses 
would be impossible should we fail to consider most carefully the 
various agents employed to produce the fermentation in dough by 
which the proper and desirable lightness is given to the products 
of the oven. These agents are often supplied to the bread-maker 
by the chemists, and are more generally known as baking pow- 
ders. Compressed or.distillers' yeast is largely used in the cities, 
and a dry hop yeast is also extensively manufactured, and sold 
where the compressed yeast can not be procured fresh from the 
distillery. Both of these articles are, we believe, perfectly whole- 
some, analysis of the samples procured by us having shown the 
presence of no deleterious element or substance whatever. The 
use of either, however, is very limited, compared with the con- 
sumption of baking powders. 

Though the Scriptures assert that " man does not live by 
bread alone, " we have nevertheless come to regard it as veritably 
" the staff of life." It constitutes a part of every meal. It is the 
inseparable accompaniment of almost every variety of animal 
food. No vegetable, not even the potato, has succeeded in dis- 
placing it. It is peculiarly the staple article of the dietary of 
childhood. Whatever, then, enters into its composition can not 
be too carefully or conscientiously studied as to its purity and 
wholesomeness. 

The same proportion of deleterious ingredients in articles of 
food which are taken sparingly into the stomach might in the 
largely and constantly-consumed article of bread prove not only 
dangerous but fatal. Vinegar, pepper and even sugar may be 
adulterated with deadly poisons— with sulphuric acid, red lead and 
muriate of tin, and yet the quantity of either of them eaten at any 



BKEAD AND ITS INGREDIENTS. 43 

one time is comparatively so small that no immediately serious 
effects may seem to follow. The use of much less powerful drugs 
than these in the every-day and every-meal article of bread might, 
on the other hand, completely destroy health and greatly shorten 
life. 

It is a well-known fact that the majority of baking powders 
supplied to families, as well as to the bakeries, are largely com- 
posed of alum, As we have shown in the preceding chapter, alum 
is sometimes added also to the cheaper grades of flour, and, where 
this is the case, the consumer of the bread is liable to receive a 
double dose of it. 

Of fourteen samples of baking powder analyzed by us, all but 
three were found to contain alum in considerable quantity. Of 
twenty samples of bakers' bread analyzed at the same time, six- 
teen were found to contain alum, though whether it was intro- 
duced in a baking powder or added by the baker to whiten the 
darker grades of flour so generally used we are unable to state. 
These examinations are certainly sufficient to show that the use of 
alum, despite all that has been said and written against its use, is 
very general. The captivating whiteness which it imparts to the 
bread enables the baker to disguise an inferior and even a dam- 
aged flour, and thus to perpetrate a fraud. But did the evil end 
here we might dismiss the subject without further comment. 

Having shown by actual analysis the great frequency with 
which alum is used, it becomes our duty to consider its effect upon 
the system. Is it deleterious? 

Dr. Darglish, an eminent English authority, says: " Its effect 
on the system is that of a topical astringent on the surface of the 
alimentary canal, producing constipation and deranging the pro- 
cess of absorption. But its action in neutralizing the efficacy of 
the digestive solvents is by far the most important and unques- 
tionable. The very purpose for which it is used by the baker is 
the prevention of those early stages of solution which spoil the 
color and lightness of the bread while it is being prepared, and 
which it does most effectually; but it does more than needed, for 
while it prevents solution at a time that is desirable, it also con- 
tinues its effects when taken into the stomach, and the conse- 
quence is that a large portion of the gluten and other valuable 
constituents of the flour are never properly dissolved, but pass 
through the alimentary canal without affording any nourishment 
whatever. " 

According to the great chemist, Liebig, " it hardens the nutri- 



44 BEEAD AND ITS INGREDIENTS. 

tious constituent of the bread, the gluten, and renders it more in- 
digestible. 

Dr. Hassall, in his exhaustive treatise on bread and its adul- 
terations, asks: " Is it worth while to injure the properties of the 
bread by using alum for the sake of obtaining an unnaturally white 
loaf? " And he adds: " The public, in judging of the quality of 
bread by its color — by its whiteness — commits a most serious 
mistake; there is little or no connection between color and quality ; 
in fact, very generally, the whitest breads are the most adulter- 
ated. The public, therefore, should lose nD time in correcting its 
judgment on this point. " 

Dr. Gibbon, writing of alum, says; " Its use in the manufac- 
ture of bread is injurious to health, and concurs indirectly with 
other things in increasing the mortality, especially of young chil- 
dren." 

Even cases of actual poisoning by the accidental use of alum 
are given in the books, while numerous experiments on living ani- 
mals have clearly demonstrated its corrosive action on the mucous 
membrane. Even when taken in small quantities, as in bread, it 
is apt to seriously disorder the stomach and to occasion acidity 
and dyspepsia. 

The most that has been urged in defense of the use of alum is 
that it undergoes a chemical change during the process of baking 
bv which it is rendered comparatively harmless. The facts of the 
case clearly controvert this theory. 

Dr. Mott, of New York, in a recent paper, says: "Because 
of the decomposition of the alum by the bicarbonate of soda, some 
scientific men have been induced to say that ' there was no alum 
in„the baked product' in which the powder was used; thus lead- 
ing the public to believe, bv a trick in wording, that the elements 
which compose the alum are driven off in the process of baking; 
while the truth of the matter is, that every element which com- 
poses the alum remains in the baked product, which, if eaten, enter 
the stomach, and are absorbed by the blood, acting the same as 
alum. This is not only my opinion, but it is the opinion of the 
leading scientific men of this county, such as Chandler, Barker, 
Johnson, Morton, Hays, Willard Parker, Alonzo Clark, William A. 
Hammond, Ryland T. Brown, J. A. McCorkle and J. H. Raymond, 
of the Brooklyn Board of Health, and many others." 

It would seem to be a sufficient condemnation of alum that in 
England, where its effects have been carefully studied for years, 
its use by bakers is strictly interdicted by law. 



BREAD AND ITS INGREDIENTS. 45 

Of the three samples of baking powder analyzed by us and 
found to contain no alum, one, we were gratified to find, was 
largely composed of a pure cream of tartar. The acids contained 
in the other two samples were of a cheaper character, though per- 
fectly wholesome when used in limited quantities. And here we 
may observe that one of the inducements held out to the public 
by the manufacturers of alumed baking powders is the cheapness 
of the article. A powder made from pure fruit acid can not possi- 
bly be sold as low as the alum powders. 

Bread that has been made with alum powder, when twenty - 
four hours old, is very apt to crumble and go to pieces. By this 
means the use of alum in baking powders may sometimes be de- 
tected. 

Sulphate of copper, as well as alum, has been mentioned as 
an adulterant of bread, but in our investigations we have failed to 
discover in any instance the presence of that poisonous salt. 

Hassall also enumerates in the list of English adulterants bone 
ashes, bone dust, white clay, the carbonates of soda, magnesia 
and lime, and, lastly, mineral white, terra alba, or hydrated sul- 
phate of lime. "These several substances," he remarks, "were 
chiefly introduced through the flour with which the bread was 
made." 

In view of the foregoing facts, we most thoroughly agree with 
Dr. Wight, the accomplished and really scientific Commissioner of 
Health of Milwaukee, that " those who manufacture bread, pastry, 
candy, etc., should be brought under supervision of the Health 
office through a special skilled inspector. " 

Nor is the use of alum or other harmful adulterants of bread 
the only reason to be advanced in support of Dr. Wight's position. 
During his investigation of the subject treated of in this chapter 
the writer has had occasion to visit a number of the larger baker- 
ies, and these visits have generally been made during the night or 
earlier morning hours, when the machinery of the establishment 
was in full operation and the entire process of bread-making could 
be observed. An insight into the manner of manipulating the 
materials was not in some instances calculated to sharpen our 
appetite for the fresh white loaf that appeared on our breakfast 
table the following morning. While in two cases, which we must 
regard as exceptions, an effort seemed to be made to enforce 
cleanliness in the methods of handling the materials, as well as in 
the persons of those engaged about the place, in every other in- 
stance there was an evident disregard of all rules of decency, with 



46 BEEAD AND ITS INGEEDIENTS. 

an occasional occurrence so grossly unclean as to shock even the 
least scrupulous. Under a system of inspection such as Dr. Wight 
has suggested such a condition of things would be impossible. 
The fear of exposure and consequent loss of patronage would in 
itself impel the public baker to institute rules of cleanliness in his 
establishment and insist upon their observance. 



PASTRY. 47 



CHAPTER V. 
CRACKERS, CAKE AND PASTRY. 



There is an adulteration of sweet crackers and several vari- 
eties of cake which should not be overlooked and must be con- 
demned. We refer to ammonia (volatile alkali) , which we have 
found to be used in cake in such quantity as to be readily detected 
by the odor, as well as the taste. The purpose it serves the baker 
is to cause a quick raising, which is especially desired in those 
varieties of cake which are cooked quickly in a very hot oven. 
This ammonia is a poison, and under certain circumstances will 
even produce death. Cases where its use has been attended with 
fatal results are given in the books. 

The ordinary soda crackers which are retailed at the cheaper 
groceries for less than six cents per pound are really unfit for use. 
They are not only made from very inferior and frequently from 
damaged flour, but the dough is allowed in many cases to partially 
decompose or rot before it is baked. This decomposition, it is 
claimed, renders the crackers brittle. We are informed by an ex- 
perienced baker that sulphuric acid is also quite commonly used 
for " clearing the crackers. " 

A really good and wholesome soda cracker can not be manu- 
factured and sold at wholesale for much less than nine cents per 
pound, and yet crackers of the kind we have just described are 
often retailed for four cents per pound. 

The pies supplied from the city bakeries are often manufac- 
tured with regard only to their cheapness. The crust, in lieu of 
being shortened with butter, is sometimes made with grease of a 
very inferior and even impure quality. A preparation of tallow, 
sometimes called bakers' butter, has been quite extensively used, 
though we believe it has to some extent been supplanted of late 
by oleomargarine. 



48 PASTRY. 

The mince-meat of the bakeries we have often found com- 
posed of the cheapest grade of dried apples, an inferior meat — 
and very little even of that— and impure spices for seasoning. 

The introduction of corn-starch in custard and pumpkin pies 
frequently enables the baker to largely dispense with the use of 



The very cheap articles so often met with at the coffee stands 
and lunch houses in the vicinity of the clocks and railroad depots, 
and known as Washington pie, railroad cake, etc., are made up 
chiefly of the refuse and waste material of the bakeries, old and 
musty cakes, waste fruit, a little spice and much molasses. 



GLUCOSE. 49 



CHAPTER VI. 
GLUCOSE, 



The twin inventions which the present century has contrib- 
uted as the fitting climax to a long-continued era of unchecked 
fraud and food adulteration are oleomargarine, or false butter, and 
glucose, or spurious sugar. The first-named substance has been 
already considered at length in these pages. The second will be 
made the subject of this chapter. 

The discovery of the process of converting starch into sugar 
was made by Kirchoff, a Russian chemist, as early as 1811. The 
traffic in colonial sugars at that time being interdicted by Napo- 
leon, the announcement created the most intense excitement. It 
was thought the sugar problem had been finallv solved, and fac- 
tories for the production of the new sweet were straightway erected 
both in Germany and France. The excitement soon subsided, 
however, upon the discovery that glucose was very inferior in 
sweetness to cane sugar.* The invention of the process for ex- 
tracting a better sugar from beet root occurred also about this 
time, and had the effect of .putting a temporary stop to the whole 
glucose business. 

But it was found impossible to produce a palatable table syrup 
from beet sugar, and after a time the question of the feasibility of 
manipulating the starch into an uncrystalizable syrup was again 
agitated, and received more or less attention up to 1832, when the 
chemist Payen brought out an improvement upon the original 
Kirchoff process. Payen was soon followed also by Musculus and 
Dubrunfault with further improvements, which at once gave anew 
life to the abandoned enterprise. To adopt the language of one of 
the glucose historians, " Factory followed factory throughout 



*One pound of cane sugar has the same sweetening power as 2?^ pounds of 
glucose. 



50 GLUCOSE. 

France and Germany. Better and improved machinery and 
methods were discovered continually. The sugar, at first a brown, 
bitterish product, became a pure, white and sweet article, and was 
found to contain all the elements for the amelioration of beer, wine 
and vinegar. It was also found that the saccharine principle could 
be checked and the syrup turned into a gummy substance, equal 
in its elements to the best quality of gum arabic. " 

In France and Germany there were, in 1838, only nineteen 
factories. In 1867 this number had increased to sixty-seven, and 
in 1878 to eighty-four. 

As the demand for table syrup in Europe is very light, it 
should be stated here that fully seven-eighths of the product of 
these factories is used for manufacturing purposes. Such is far 
from being the case, however, in orr own country, and the con- 
sideration of this fact naturally brings us to the introduction of 
glucose in the United States. 

Mr. M. M. Baldndge, in a recent contribution to tht daily 
press, says: *' In the fall of 1865, when residing in New York city, 
I received a letter from one of my friends in France, a manufac- 
turer of glucose, by which he advised me of having shipped a keg 
of his white, dense glucose, with a request to compare his product 
with the best article made in this country. He wished to know 
what progress the business had made in the United States. The 
sample glucose which arrived was an excellent article, and at once 
I took steps to investigate the matter. To my utter surprise, no 
glucose could be found for comparison. The article was actually 
so little known that the wholesale confectioners declared they had 
never heard even of the name. I then commenced to work over 
some of the glucose into a sweet syrup, and introduced a sample 
of it to one of the heavy sugar brokers. When I told him that the 
main base of the syrup was starch, and it could be produced 
pound for pound, he refused to believe me, but I partly convinced 
him by proving the fact from some scientific works, and by letters 
from European manufacturers. A few daj^s after Wall street was 
in an excitement. Corn syrup was introduced, and its career 
opened for the United States. " 

It is hardly necessary to remaik that in the few years which 
have elapsed since glucose threw Wall street into a flutter numer- 
ous factories have sprung up all over the country, while many 
more are in process of construction, flooding and to flood the land 
with this spurious sweet. 

Before considering the question of the purity and wholesome- 



GLUCOSE. 51 

ness of glucose it is important that we should understand the pro- 
cess of its manufacture, as we will then be able to account more 
readily for the presence of certain impurities with which we find it 
almost invariably contaminated. This process, as given by Payen, 
the chemist, may be described as follows: 

The saccharification of the starch is carried on in largo wooden 
vats, capable of holding 2,800 gallons. The contents of the vat 
may be heated by forcing in steam through a coiled steam pipe at 
the bottom. The steam pipe is perforated, to permit the steam to 
escape at many points into the contents of the vat. In France the 
steam pipe is made of lead; in this country they use iron pipes. 
When two tons of starch are to be converted into sugar, thirty- 
two barrels of water and about eighty pounds of sulphuric acid are 
placed in the vat, and the whole heated to 212 degrees by forcing 
in steam. Two hundred pounds of starch are then mixed with 
twenty-two gallons of water and stirred up, and four or five gal- 
lons of this mixture are run into the vat. The temperature is kept 
up to the boiling point all the while, and successive charges of 
starch are run in till the whole amount is converted into sugar. 
The steam is then shut off, and chalk is added in sufficient quantity 
to neutralize the sulphuric acid, but if too little chalk is used, free 
sulphuric acid will be left in the contents of the vat. The spar- 
ingly soluble sulphate of lime is formed, and much of it settles to 
the bottom of the liquid; fehe clear liquid is drawn off and evap- 
orated by steam heat till the proper density of syrup is secured, 
or until it will crystalize on cooling and standing for several days, 
according as they seek to make syrup or sugar. 

Analyses of glucose and glucose syrup have been made by 
Prof. Charles R. Fletcher, Lecturer on Chemistry in Boston Uni- 
versity and State Assay ar of Massachusetts; by Prof. R. C. 
Kedzie, of the Agricultural College of Michigan, and more recently 
by Prof. Geo. A. Mariner and Dr. T. D. Williams, of Chicago, as 
well as by hundreds of other highly competent and credible an- 
alysts throughout the country. 

Prof. Fletcher, in a letter to Mr. G. T. Angell, the distin- 
guished humanitarian and reformer, of Boston, says: " I have re- 
cently made three analyses of glucose and two of glucose syrup, 
and have found quantities of free sulphuric acid in every case." 

Prof. Mariner, in a letter to the same gentleman, savs: "I 
have examined several syrups made essentially and entirely of 
glucose, and found in them chlorides of tin, calcium, iron and mag- 
nesia, and in quantities which made them very poisonous." 



52 GLUCOSE. 

A family by the name of Doty, living at Hudson, Michigan, 
recently purchased some syrup of a grocer in that village. The 
members of the family ate freely of the syrup and were all made 
very sick by its use. They became alarmed and sent a can of the 
syrup to the Michigan Agricultural College for analysis, supposing 
it to contain poison. The result of the analysis of this syrup in- 
duced Prof. Kedzie, of the university, to examine a number of 
table syrups purchased promiscuously from the grocery shops. 
The result of these investigations, as reported by Prof. Kedzie, 
was as follows: 

No. 1. — Pure cane sugar syrup. 

No. 2. — Starch sugar syrup. Contains some sulphate of iron 
(copperas), and contains in each gallon 107.35 grains of lime. 

No. 3. — The grocer called it " poor stuff." I have seldom seen 
an article that better sustained its recommendation. Made of 
starch sugar; contains plenty of copperas and 297 grains of lime 
in a gallon. 

No. 4. — Nearly pure cane sugar syrup. 

No. 5. — Starch sugar syrup. Contains copperas, and J 00 
grains of lime in a gallon. 

Nos. 6, 7, 8. — All made of starch sugar. Contain sulphate of 
iron and plenty of lime. 

No. 9. — This is the specimen from Hudson which caused the 
sickness in the Doty family. A starch sugar syrup; contains in 
the" gallon 71.83 grains of free sulphuric acid, 28 grains of sulphate 
of iron, and 363 grains of lime. 

No. 10. — Contains starch sugar, copperas and lime — amount 
not estimated. 

No. 11. — A starch sugar syrup. Contains in the gallon 141.9 
grains free sulphuric acid, 25 grains sulphate of iron, and 724.83 
grains of lime. 

No. 12. — Contains starch sugar, seasoned with sulphate of 
iron and lime. 

No. 13. — Starch sugar. Contains in the gallon 58.48 grains of 
sulphate of iron, 83.14 grains of free sulphuric acid, and 440.12 
grains of lime. 

No. 14. — Starch sugar. Contains in a gallon 80 grains of free 
sulphuric acid, 38 grains of iron and 262.48 grains of lime. 

Nos. 15, 16. — Contain starch sugar, sulphate of iron and lime. 

No. 17. — Starch sugar, sulphate of iron and 202.33 grains of 
lime. 

Dr. Williams has made a careful analysis for us of a number 



GLUCOSE. 53 

of samples of glucose syrup and of sugars adulterated with 
glucose, in every case finding free sulphuric acid. 

The presence of all the impurities found by the chemists whom 
we have quoted are readily accounted for. If iron pipes are used 
for conveying the steam for heating the contents of the vat, the 
sulphuric acid will attack and dissolve some of the iron, and thus 
sulphate of iron (copperas) will appear. If too little chalk is used 
free sulphuric acid will remain in the syrup. The chalk being car- 
bonate of lime, its use will explain why lime is sometimes found 
in the syrup in large quantities. 

Prof. Kedzie observes: " As chalk is insoluble in water, and 
sulphate of lime is very sparingly soluble, many persons would 
suppose that little or no lime would remain in these syrups. But 
we must bear in mind that sugar itself acts the part of an acid 
with many substances. Thus there are two well-known salts 
formed by combination of lime and sugar; one containing one 
equivalent of lime to one of sugar, the other containing three 
equivalents of lime to one of sugar. 

" These sucrates of lime have lost, entirely, the sweet taste 
characteristic of sugar, and have a bitterish taste instead. Last 
spring some students at this college brought me a small quantity 
of a whitish, granular mass, which deposited from the maple syrup 
in ' settling ' to make maple sugar. The sugar boilers called it 
sand, as it is hard and gritty, insoluble in water, and destitute of 
any sweet taste. On analysis I fbuQd the material to be nearly 
pure sucrate of lime, containing in addition a small amount of 
phosphate of magnesia. Here was the natural formation of the 
sucrate of lime from the elements of plant food contained in the 
sap. 

"Not only will sugar thus combine with lime, oxide of lead, 
oxide of iron, etc., but it will associate with itself sulphuric acid, 
and form a compound acid which comports itself very differently 
from simple sulphuric acid. This sucro-sulphuric acid forms a 
pretty large class of salts which are soluble in water, but espe- 
cially soluble in solutions of sugar. Ke-agents which will readily 
precipitate sulphuric acid and sulphates, e. g., chloride of barium, 
will not precipitate the sucro-sulphates. 

" Glucose has the same power as an acid substance as sucrose, 
forming a class of soluble glucosates. It will also associate with 
itself sulphuric acid, and form a class of gluco-sulphates. Un- 
doubtedly a large part of the lime found in these starch-sugar 
syrups exists in the form of gluco-sulphate of lime." 



54 GLUCOSE. 

Does the reader ask: Can a glucose be produced that will be 
entirely free from the impurities which the above analysis have 
discovered? 

We answer, It can. 

Does he further inquire how and where this result can be ac- 
complished, and why it has not been accomplished by the glucose 
manufacturers? 

Let us reply that it can be accomplished in the laboratory of 
the chemist, with absolutely pure materials and the exercise of 
the greatest care in their manipulation. But made in quantity, as 
it is in the factories, of materials which the chemist would reject, 
glucose can not be other than we find it. In short, the glucose of 
the laboratory and the glucose of commerce are very far from 
being one and the same thing. The product of the factory can be 
sold at a profit for three cents per pound. The article produced 
by the chemist could not be manufactured upon either a small or 
a large scale for any such price. And not until a more expensive 
article of glucose is placed upon the market can we hope or expect 
to find it free from impurities more or less deleterious and dan- 
gerous. 

But even should the question of the purity and wholesome- 
ness of this new article of commerce be finally settled in the 
affirmative, there is still this to be urged against it: TV hen sold 
for cane sugar or cane sugar syrup, it is an unquestionable decep- 
tion and fraud. It will not supply the sweetness which cane sugar 
furnishes and it can not therefore honestly take the place of cane 
sugar. We have already shown that its saccharine power stands 
as one to two and a half of cane sugar. However pure and harm- 
less it might be, it would still be a dilutant, and its addition to or 
substitution for cane sugar would be only to cheapen and to cheat. 
Its relation to cane sugar is very similar to that of water to milk. 
It is no more cane sugar than oleomargarine is butter. 

The extent to which this spurious sweet enters into the prep- 
aration and manufacture of articles of food will appear in the 
chapters that follow. 



SUGAR AND SUGAR SYRUPS. 55 



CHAPTER VII. 
SUGAR AND SUGAR SYRUPS, 



It is stated by Dr. Letheby, in his admirable work on " Food," 
that the Anglo-Saxon population of England and America con- 
sume annually 41.4 pounds of sugar per head, or more than any 
other race of people. Being peculiarly a sugar-consuming nation, 
whatever relates to our supply of sweets must especially affect 
and interest us. 

The books inform us that there is a large class of substances 
included in the general term of sugar, though there are only two 
of sufficient commercial importance to demand attention in these 
pages. One is termed by the chemist sucrose, and includes cane, 
beet'and maple sugar, all of which are identical and possess pre- 
cisely the same amount of sweetening power. 

The second class is known as glucose, or grape sugar. It is 
the sugar which in its pure and natural state we find sometimes in 
the raisin. It is also possible to produce this sugar artificially 
from old cotton and woollen rags, from paper, sawdust and count- 
less other materials, though it has not been found profitable to do 
so because of the time and expense required to make the chemi- 
cal change, as well as the difficulty attending the purifying and 
decoloring of the sugar when it is produced. That it can be read- 
ily and economically produced from starch, however, we have 
already shown in the preceding chapter. 

It is to sucrose or the products of the sugar cane that we 
wish to devote this chapter; these being the sweets which are 
generally supplied the consumer by his grocery man. 

The adulteration of sugar of the lower grades lias been prac- 
ticed in almost all countries, and the adulterants used have been 



56 SUGAR AND SUGAR SYRUPS. 

quite numerous. The ordinary brown sugars, when made from 
juice which has not been thoroughly filtered and cleansed, have 
been found also to contain what we may term accidental impurities 
in very Luge quantities, such as fragments of the cane, sporules 
of fungus, acari, or sugar insects, and glucose. 

The adulterants, at one time used in England and also to some 
extent in this country, were starch, gum and dextrin, marble dust, 
chalk, sand, bone-dust and common salt. But nearly, if not quite 
all of these, seem to have given place within the past few years 
to a single article — glucose — which would seem to have become a 
universal adulterant. Such being the case, we will confine our 
consideration of the adulteration of sugar to its being accom- 
plished by the aid of this one article, except in the case of refined 
or white sugars where certain metallic and other agents are used 
for bleaching purposes. 

We have already had occasion to observe that glucose is often 
met with in ordinary brown sugar as a natural impurity, but it 
should be borne in mind that its presence is never discovered in 
such cases in any large quantity. Whenever it is found to be 
present to any considerable extent, it has been added as an adul- 
terant. 

Until very recently it was found by the sugar manipulators 
impossible to add glucose beyond a certain quantity, say from 10 
to 15 per cent., without affecting the appearance and general char- 
acter of the sugar to such an extent as to lessen its value. By a 
recently discovered process, however, very much larger quantities 
are introduced and in such a manner as to render its presence 
quite unnoticeable. The article thus adulterated has come to be 
known among the initiated as " new process " sugar. 

Six samples of brown sugar were procured by us from six 
different sources, and submitted to Dr. T. D. Williams for analysis. 
His examination of them developed the fact that they all con- 
tained glucose, as follows: No. 1, 33£ percent.; No. 2, 7| percent.; 
No. 3, 13£ percent.; No. 4, 41J percent.; No. 5, 7 pei cent, and 
No. 6, 16§ per cent. 

Numbers 1 and 4, which contained respectively 33£ and 41 J 
per cent, of glucose, were both very light-colored and dry, and 
would be selected by the ordinary purchaser as fine articles of 
sugar. It is hardly necessary to remark that they are sugars of 
the " new process." 

Numbers 3 and 6, which contained respectively 13^ and 16f 



SUGAR AND SUGAR SYRUPS. 57 

per cent, of glucose, were of a much darker color and apparently 
of a much lower grade. 

To illustrate the extent to which this adulteration of sugar 
with glucose prevails, we may state that a member of a well-known 
firm of manufacturing bakers remarked to the writer, during his 
investigations, that he had abandoned trying to procure a really 
pure sugar in the North, and had been compelled to order direct 
from producers in the South. " How long it will be," he added, 
" before they also learn the trick of adulteration, I cannot say, 
but it is not apt to be very long." 

We could refer to many other analyses made by competent 
chemists at other points which only go to confirm the correctness 
of the results reported to us by Dr. Williams. 

We have already referred to the impurities met with in glucose 
which, in our opinion, render its wholesomeness and safety as an 
article of diet, to say the least, very questionable. If these impuri- 
ties exist in the glucose they are necessarily introduced in the 
sugar when it is adulterated with that article. 

But however harmless these adulterated sugars might be, so 
far as their effect on the health of the consumer is concerned, 
there is a fraud involved in the sale of glucose for sugar which 
cannot be too strongly condemned. As we have had occasion to 
observe in the preceding chapter, glucose affords only one degree 
of sweetness to two and one-half degrees afforded by sugar. The 
person, therefore, who purchases sugar thus adulterated, is de- 
frauded of the very thing for which he pays his money — viz., the 
sweetness. An instance of the effects of this fraud was brought 
to our notice where a farmer's wife purchased, as she supposed, 
sugar with which to preserve her fruit. Instead of a pure sugar 
she was sold an article containing about 30 per cent, of glucose. 
She had followed the time-honored formula of a pound of sugar 
to a pound of fruit, but to her great disappointment and loss she 
discovered, a few months later, that her summer's labor had been 
wasted, and that her preserves had spoiled. There had not been 
sufficient saccharine strength in the sugar she had used to keep 
them. 

Other and very similar cases might be given where the loss 
suffered has not been confined to the difference in the cost or value 
of the sugar and its substitute. 

But if sugar is thus adulterated the adulteration of syrup is 
carried to even a greater length. We have referred to the dis- 
coveries made by Prof. Kedzie, of Michigan, in analyzing a num- 



58 SUGAR AND SUGAR SYRUPS. 

ber of samples of table syrups procured from different dealers in 
that State. Our own investigations fully confirm the correctness 
of the results reported by him. 

In twenty samples of syrups examined by us, only one was 
found to be pure and unadulterated, while several of the samples 
consisted almost wholly of glucose, there being barely a sufficiency 
of cane syrup added to impart flavor and odor. 

Referring again to the wholesomeness of glucose, we may ob- 
serve that a merchant supplying us with a number of the best 
samples we were able to procure, viz., those containing the smallest 
proportion of glucose, expressed the opinion that his own observa- 
tion had convinced him that glucose is not a safe or wholesome 
article of food, " though," he continued, " it would be quite out of 
the question for us to try to sell only a pure cane syrup." 

A wholesale merchant in Michigan, not long since, supplied 
twelve lumber camps with syrup, the supply in every case coming 
from the same manufacturer. In every one of the twelve camps 
sickness followed of a character which could be traced to no cause 
but the syrup, which had been used. This syrup consisted of 
about three parts of glucose to one of cane syrup. 

With regard to the impurities and poisons which have been 
discovered in refined sugars, it may be stated that Prof. Geo. A. 
Marriner, of Chicago, in analyzing twelve samples, procured 
promiscuously, found muriate of tin in every one of them, the 
amount varying from a mere trace to what might be termed a 
poisonous quantity. 

The students in the School of Mines, of Columbia College, 
New York, extracted quantities of tin from sugar which they 
hung in beads to the necks of the bottles from which the sugar 
was taken. 

The use of tin for bleaching sugars has, no doubt, been very 
general, though we are inclined to the belief that in some cases 
the practice has been discontinued. Analyses made under our 
direction, during our investigation of this subject, led us to this 
conclusion. Out of six samples of refined sugars examined, two 
were found to contain no trace of that metal. 



HONEY AND OTHER SWEETS. 59 



CHAPTER VIII. 
HONEY AND OTHER SWEETS. 



There are few luxuries of the table which would seem to be 
more adulterated than honey. Several English analysts mention 
as the more common adulterants starch and cane sugar, while 
Mitchell and Normandy enumerate also chalk, hydrated sulphate 
of lime and pipe clay. The use of starch is accounted for on the 
ground of its giving weight and bulk, its improving the color of 
very dark honey, and its correcting a sharp and acidulous taste 
which old honey is apt to acquire. 

The writer has reason to believe that all the adulterations 
named by these English authorities, while they were at one time 
more or less used in this country, have of late years been dis- 
carded, even cane sugar having found a substitute in this, as in 
many other instances, in the cheaper article of glucose. 

It is entirely safe to say that with hardly an exception the ex- 
tracted or combless honeys offered in the grocery shops are sim- 
ply glucose, with barely a sufficient admixture of honey to give 
flavor. And even much of that which is palmed off as comb- 
honey is but very litttle better. The deception is often practiced 
thus: A thin strip or section of comb-honey is placed perpendicu- 
larly in a bottle or glass jar, sufficiently large to one-fourth or 
even one-third fill the vessel. The bottle or jar is then filled with 
glucose, corked, sealed and labeled " Pure Clover Honey." The 
goods thus offered are at least very attractive to the eye, and the 
appearance of the comb in the transparent liquid has the desired 
effect of disarming suspicion as to its being the genuine product of 
the apiary. 

The profits of such deception are, of course, enormous, and 
readily account for the extent to which it is carried. An individual 
who has long enjoyed the reputation of being a purveyor of pure 



60 HONEY AND OTHEE SWEETS. 

honey in one of the larger western cities, and has had an almost 
exclusive family trade, was found by the writer to be delivering to 
his patrons an article composed of about equal parts of honey and 
glucose. 

At the fifth annual meeting of the Western Illinois and East- 
ern Iowa Bee-Keepers' Society, held in 1879, an interesting report 
on the adulteration of honey was submitted by Mr. Charles 
Dadant, of Hamilton, 111. Mr. Dadant said: " About ten years 
ago I had sold to a honey dealer in Chicago several barrels of ex- 
tracted honey. The price then was high — seventeen cents pei 
pound. Soon after I was informed that the same firm was retail- 
ing clover honey in small bottles and tumblers, for about the price 
or even less than they had paid me at wholesale. Of course I be- 
came convinced that my pure honey had been used to give the 
taste of honey to some cheap article, and that the mixture was 
sold as pure clover honey. But it did not occur to my mind that 
so poor an article as glucose could be used, and I imagined that a 
strong solution of white sugar had been used, the comparatively 
low price of sugar giving a fair margin to the adulterators. I then 
wrote an article on adulteration showing that unprincipled dealers 
were able to undersell the bee-keepers. My figures were based 
on a mixture of honey and sugar syrup, and on this the profit was 
handsome, but no doubt these dishonest dealers sneered at me, 
for their profit by using glucose was at least four times greater." 

Let the reader bear in mind that at the time Mr. Dadant sold 
his honey at seventeen cents, glucose was worth less than four 
cents per pound, and he can form his own estimate of the profit- 
ableness of the adulteration. 

In the same report from which we have quoted, Mr. Dadant 
says: " This rapid enriching of the adulterators was too apparent 
not to tempt some of the dealers. Many of these dealers, eager 
to get rich, took up the nefarious business, and soon the whole 
continent of North America was found too narrow for their opera- 
tions; they reached their dishonest hands across the sea to sell 
their fraudulent products in the markets of the Old World. But 
most of the countries of Europe have strict laws against the sale 
of adulterated articles. Not long since a grocer of Glasgow, Scot- 
land, was fined for having sold spurious honey from America, 
adulterated with 57 per cent, of glucose." 

Pure extracted honey generally granulates or candies in a 
very short time after being taken out of the comb, while that 
which is adulterated with glucose never does. The very reverse 



HONEY AND OTHER SWEETS. 61 

of this idea has, however, been generally entertained, and has no 
doubt lead the consumer to believe that the candied honey was a 
spurious article, while the liquid honey was pure. No doubt the 
adulterators of honey, unable to manufacture a mixture that would 
granulate, have taken no little advantage of this popular fallacy. 

In an able article upon the proper method of preventing the 
adulteration of honey, in a recent number of the American Bee 
Journal, the writer says: " We want to school dealers and con- 
sumers in selling and buying candied honey." And as a means of 
avoiding imposition we can suggest no better rule. 

The candied honey can at any time be reduced to a liquid 
state by putting the jar or vessel in hot water. The cork should 
be loosened and the water heated moderately, so as not to crack 
the jar. 

The greatest credit is due the bee-keepers for the efforts they 
have made, both individually and through their associations, to 
arrest the adulteration of honey and other sweets, and it is only to 
be regretted by every lover of honesty, as well as honey that 
their appeal to Congress for legislation to this end has thus far 
proven fruitless. When it is considered that in the city of Chicago 
alone over 450 tons of honey are sold annually, the importance of 
protecting its purity can be estimated. 

A few years ago an individual made a contract for the sweep- 
ings and scrapings of the floors of one of the largest manufactur- 
ing confectionery establishments of the Northwest, the considera- 
tion being that he should clean the floors two or three times a 
week without expense to the manufacturer. The person who en- 
tered into this contract was at the time engaged in the manufac- 
ture and sale of maple sugar and maple syrup, and it is hardly 
necessary to remark that he found a use for the sweetened filth 
and drippings which he obtained from the candy factory floors. 
Possibly the novel idea of utilizing this debris may have been sug- 
gested by the boiling down of the salty water obtained by wash- 
ing the earth under the smoke-houses of the South during the 
war — a process by which the scarce and expensive article of salt 
was sometimes obtained during the blockade. 

We do not cite this incident as illustrative of the ordinary 
methods of adulterating the sugar and syrup of the maple tree. 
It is merely given as an extreme case, going to show the resources 
to which the ingenious and unscrupulous adulterator may have 
recourse. 

Observation as well as analyses have convinced us that only a 



62 HONEY AND OTHEK SWEETS. 

very small per cent, of the products of the sugar tree reach the 
consumer in their pure and natural state. Our " Pure Vermont 
Maple Sugar " is more frequently a product of the cane planta- 
tions of the South, or even the grain fields of the West, than it is 
of the honest maple groves of New England. Cane sugar is largely 
used as an adulterant of maple sugar and glucose as an adulterant 
of maple syrup. In either case the quantity of the maple product 
used is often barely sufficient to impart flavor, as in the case of 
gluco-honey. Glucose has of late been adopted also as an adul- 
terant of the sugar, as well as the syrup of the maple, its cheap- 
ness rendering it preferable to cane sugar. We have found in sev- 
eral samples of cheap maple sugar examined by us terra alba 
present in considerable quantity, from which we infer that it is 
likewise a common adulterant. As this white earth is delivered to 
the manufacturer at a cost of little over one cent a pound, while 
glucose sells for about three cents, we can at once see how a 
maple sugar largely composed of these two substances can be 
produced at a very trifling expense and a very large profit. 



JELLIES, PRESERVES AND FRUIT BUTTERS. 63 



CHAPTER IX. 
JELLIES, PRESERVES AND FRUIT BUTTERS. 



It is by no means a pleasant task, however much of a duty it 
may be, to undeceive a credulous public with regard to the purity 
and whoiesomeness of those articles which have come to be cher- 
ished as table luxuries. But an expose of the adulterations and 
shameless frauds practiced by the purveyors of domestic supplies 
would be incomplete without a reference to the manner in which 
the jellies, preserves, and that seemingly most innocent article, 
apple butter, are prepared in the factories or rather the lab- 
ratories whence they are supplied in astonishing quantities to our 
"family grocer." 

The writer can assure his readers that his investigations in 
this direction have not been unattended with serious difficulties 
and frequent rebuffs. Indeed but one manufacturer out of a large 
number called upon showed any willingness whatever to be inter- 
viewed as to the mysteries of his art. In this single instance it is 
only fair to state that no effort at concealment was made, and pro- 
bably for the simple reason that there was little to conceal. The 
only adulterant used in the establishment was glucose — substitut- 
ing it for sugar — and this in very limited quantities. 

This attempted concealment on the part of the manufacturers 
will be understood when the writer states, after a careful ex- 
amination and analysis, that with rare exceptions the articles or- 
dinarily offered as jellies and preserves are simply sweetened and 
colored abominations. 

The base of nearly all the jellies turned out in these estab- 
lishments is what is termed apple juice. Green apples, when they 
can be purchased to advantage, or, when green apples are out of 
season, dried apples are boiled until they can be strained through 
a coarse cloth or bag, the only residue being the seeds, pealing 



64 JELLIES, PRESERVES AND FRUIT BUTTERS. 

and coarser fibrous portion of the fruit. This residue or pulp, as 
we will call it, remains to find another use as will be shown further 
on. 

Now suppose we wish to prepare a raspberry jelly. We will 
adopt for our guidance a recipe actually in use in one of these es- 
tablishments; viz.: 

8 gallons apple juice. 

16 lbs. sugar. 

8 lbs. glucose. 

1 oz. sulphuric acid. 

i lb. corn starch. 
Add to this compound the coloring (an aniline poison) and rasp- 
berry flavoring (acetic ether) and we have a "Pure Raspberry 
Jelly." If it is desired to produce a strawberry or currant 
instead of a raspberry jelly it is only necessary to change the 
flavoring. 

It would be hard to conceive a more fraudulent compound than 
the above, and yet one sample out of five analyzed by us was 
found to contain no trace of fruit whatever, not even the almost 
omnipresent "apple juice." This "pure jelly" was little more than 
common glue colored and strongly flavored. 

Upon the authority of an extensive and experienced manufac- 
turer it may be stated that a jelly cannot be made from the fruit 
itself and sold for less than 12 cts. per lb. And yet there is hardly 
a large city where so-called fruit jellies, carefully put up in glass 
and attractively labeled, are not peddled as low as 4 cts. per lb. 
What else can they be but the basest imitations and frauds? 

Upon the same authority we may further state that a jelly 
cannot be made from apple juice, cane sugar, tartaric acid and 
pure fruit flavoring, for much less than 8 cts. per lb. ; and yet the 
most that can be said of this jelly is that it is a harmless imitation, 
and when sold as anything but an apple jelly, not what it is repre- 
sented to be. 

The preserves and jams usually met with in the grocery shops 
show upon investigation little less adulteration than the jellies. 
They are in most cases made with glucose and freely adulterated 
with apple pulp, starch and other foreign ingredients. Damaged 
and unsalable fruits, such as figs, prunes, etc., are also frequently 
purchased in quantities by the manufacturers and used to advan- 
tage. It is entirely safe to say that in not more than one case out 
of five are they either pure or wholesome. 

The process of manufacturing a cheap apple butter will as- 



JELLIES, PRESERVES AND FRUIT BUTTERS. 65 

tonish if it does not shock the consumers of that simple article. 
The residue or pulp of the apple, to which we have previously re- 
ferred, and which has been deprived of the saccharine and acidulous 
characteristics of the fruit, leaving it practically "tasteless as a 
chip," is generally made the base of apple butter. The missing 
sweetness and acidity are readily restored by the use of glucose 
and sulphuric acid, and this mixture, with the addition of spice, is 
sometimes all there is to the compound. More frequently, how- 
ever, starch is added in considerable quantities and often foreign 
vegetable and fruit matter. In one case within the knowledge of 
the writer the waste leaves and stalks of cabbage were used. In 
any event there is no element or characteristic of the compound 
that is not an insult to the innocent apple. 

In connection with his investigation of this subject there fell 
into the hands of the writer a letter and circular from a Arm of 
"consulting and analytical chemists" in St. Louis, from which it 
would seem that the inventive genius of the country, not satisfied 
with its already wonderful achievements in the art of deception 
and fraud, is still laboring with the problem of how to produce 
still cheaper and more villainous stuff in the guise of food. The 
letter, which was addressed to a Chicago manufacturer, wasas fol- 
lows : 

Dear Sir : — We wish to sell the exclusive use of a process for making a jelly 
different from any now on the market and costing less than four cents per pound. 
It is purely vegetable and perfectly healthful. Resp'y, . 

In the circular accompanying this letter these St. Louis 
gentlemen advertise themselves as prepaied to give "confidential 
consultation upon the utilization of waste products," in view of 
which fact the reader can draw his own inference as to their pro- 
posed new process of making jelly to cost less than 4 cts. per lb. 



66 CONFECTIONERY. 



CHAPTER X. 
CONFECTIONERY. 



If no other consideration impelled us to give the subject of 
confectionery our careful attention, the fact of its being chiefly 
consumed by the young should do so. To deprive childhood of 
any one of its delights would seem cruel, but how much more cruel 
it must seem to deprive it of that without which no pleasure can 
please and life itself is rendered prematurely a burden, to deprive 
it of the sweetest of all sweets — health. If it is unsafe to give our 
children candy, it is not because candy is in itself unwholesome, 
but because it has been rendered so by the black arts practiced by 
the modern confectioner, who would seem to have adopted Herod 
as his exampler and patron saint. Instead of being unwholesome 
or injurious, a pure candy supplies not only a pleasant but an 
essential element of food. It is only when it is made the vehicle 
for carrying into the sensitive stomachs of the young insidious 
poisons that its use should be condemned. 

Cane srgar, when absolutely pure, is one of the most whole- 
some dietetic, articles known to biological science. Its converti- 
bility into grape sugar being more readily performed than is the 
conversion of farinaceous food, cane sugar should oftener preclude 
the use of starch food. The presence of both cane sugar and milk 
sugar in the infant stomach is not only tolerated, but it is also 
allowed; and, in most instances, with greater impunity and with 
greater nutritive effect, providing other nitrogenous matter is 
present, than is the case when starch food is used alone. The 
evidence corroborating this assertion is manifold. Thousands of 
infants who, being deprived of their natural aliment, their mothers 
milk, and who are on this account inclined to waste away on a 
farinaceous diet, are saved by the use of condensed milk, the pres- 
ence of which could not have been borne because of the large 



CONFECTIONERY. 67 

amount of indigestible casine, were it not for the presence, also, of 
so great a quantity of saccharine matter, particularly milk sugar. 

Cane sugar being healthful, the form in which we partake of 
it, or the method by which it is carried into the stomach, is of but 
little importance. If it be an ingredient of either food or drink, or 
in the form of a confection, it matters not if it be but pure. Con- 
fectionery is only dangerous when rendered impure by the use of 
adulterants, poisonous coloring matter and artificial flavoring 
essences, or where used to excess. 

We regret to state that our investigations have lead us to 
believe that only a small portion of the candy sold in the shops is 
free from adulteration while very much of it is rendered absolutely 
poisonous by the flavoring and coloring substances made use of 
by the manufacturers. In fact no article we have examined 
would seem to be adulterated so generally and to so great an 
extent. 

Dr. T. D. Williams, who has rendered us constant and valuable 
assistance throughout our researches, recently had occasion to 
analyze one hundred and fifty samples of confectionery purchased 
promiscuously from street vendors as well as from the candy 
shops. Of these one hundred and fifty samples he found one hun- 
dred and twenty-seven more or less impure. The most common 
adulterant discovered was glucose. The analyses were made, in 
fact, with special reference to ascertaining the extent to which this 
substance is used by the confectioners as a substitute for cane 
sugar, and the result will be read with interest. Terra alba, 
(white earth) was likewise frequently found and in large quantity, 
also the poisonous flavoring extracts manufactured of acetic ether, 
French aniline colors, starch, flour and dextrin. We will give the 
result of a few of these analyses, which are only a fair sample of 
the whole: 

1. Mint Drops, 16| per cent, glucose, balance cane sugar. 

2. Rose Drops, 26§ per cent, glucose, balance cane sugar. 

3. Molasses Candy, 20 per cent, glucose, balance molasses. 

4. Jelly Paste, 37J per cent, glucose, balance gum and cane 
sugar, colored with cochineal. 

5. Five samples of Caramels, 18 per cent, glucose, a small 
quantity of fat (possibly butter) , balance cane sugar, chocolate 
and vanilla flavoring. 

6. Fruit Jelly, 33J per cent, grape sugar, balance flour and 
cane sugar. 

7. French Creams, 7 per cent, glucose, balance cane sugar, 



68 CONFECTIONERY. 

with a small per cent, of starch and about 2 per cent, of cream. 

8. Chocolate Caramel, 12 per cent, glucose, balance chocolate 
(about 4 per cent.), cane sugar and a small quantity of fat. 

9. Orange (gum) Cake, 18 per cent, glucose, balance gum 
arabic, cane sugar and fruit (orange) rind. 

10. ''Buffalo Bill" Molasses Candy, all glucose, covered 
with a thin coating of chocolate. 

11. Chocolate Caramel, 33 per cent, glucose, balance cane 
sugar, with about 3 per cent, of chocolate. 

16. Home- Made Molasses Candy, 83 per cent, glucose, bal- 
ance molasses. 

17. Jelly Images, 16§ per cent, glucose, balance cane sugar 
to make jelly (?) the body being a composition of flour, cane 
sugar and chocolate. 

18. Peanut Bar, 83 per cent, glucose, balance burnt cane 
sugar. 

19. Conversation Lozenges, 10 per cent, terra alba, balance 
starch, gum and cane sugar. 

20. Jelly Paste, all glucose and gum, colored with cochineal. 
2J. Molasses Candy, chocolate coated, 67 per cent, glucose, 

balance cane sugar; in this there is about 3 per cent, of chocolate. 

22. Home-Made Molasses Candy, 40 per cent, glucose, bal- 
ance molasses. 

23. " Black Ball," (three for a cent) , lamp-black, terra alba 
and sufficient sugar and starch to form them ; the whole being 
flavored with the oil of anise seed. 

It is proper to observe that the last sample, also Nos. 21 and 
22 were purchased in the vicinity of one of the public schools, 
where they are sold in large quantities to the children, owing to 
their cheapness — the greatest possible quantity for the least 
money. 

The justly-named "Black Ball," (terra-alba, lampblack, etc.,) 
was, we are informed by an intelligent confectioner, a Boston 
invention, and has only recently made its appearance in the West. 

In submitting the above analyses to us, Dr. Williams says, with 
reference to glucose: " This chemical product is used by the con- 
fectioners as a substitute for cane sugar and is almost invariably 
found present in candy, in quantities varying from 7 to 100 per 
cent. As an article of diet, being a chemical production, liable to 
be contaminated with sulphuric acid, sulphate of lime, lead, arsenic, 
etc., it should be looked upon at least with suspicion." 

The poisonous coloring of candy has probably been more agi- 



CONFECTIONERY. 



69 



tated in our own country, as well as in Europe, than any other 
subject of adulteration, and not without good results. There is a 
marked improvement in this respect in the confectionery of to-day 
over that of even ten years ago. But the practice of employing 
dangerous, mineral pigments is still continued, to some extent, by 
the more unscrupulous manufacturers, and it is impossible to an- 
alyze any considerable number of samples without detecting their 
presence. About the only safe rule to adopt, is, to reject all col- 
ored confectionery. 

The Council of Health of Paris issued, some years ago, the 
following list of colors used by the confectioners, dividing them 
into two classes, those which can be used with safety, and those 
which are more or less dangerous: 



List of Colors, the Use of Which May Be 
Permitted. 

Yellows. 

Saffron. 

Turmeric. 

French berries. 

Lake of ditto, or yellow lake. 

Persian berries. 

Lake of ditto. 

Quercitron bark. 

Lake of ditto. 

Fustic wood. 

Lake of ditto. 



Reds. 



Cochineal. 
Lakes of ditto. 
Carmine and 
Brazil wood. 
Lakes of ditt ->. 
Pink madder Jake. 



Madder purple. 

Logwood and indigo. 

Any of the lakes, with indigo of litmus. 



Blubs. 



Indigo. 
Litmus. 



List of Colors, the Use of Which Should be 
Prohibited. 

Yellows. 

Gamboge. 

The three chrome yellows, or chrom- 
ates of lead. 

Massicot, or protoxide of lead. 

Yellow orpiment, or sulphuret of ar- 
seuicum. 

King's yellow, or sulphuret of arsenic- 
urn, with lime and sulphur. 

Iodide of lead. 

Sulphuret of antimony, or Naples yel- 
low. 

Yellow ochre. 

Reds. 

Red lead, minium, or red oxide of lead. 
Vermillion, or bisulphuret of mercury. 
Red orpiment, realgar, or bisulphuret 

of arsenic. 
Iodide of mercury. 
Red ferruginous earths, as Venetian 

red, etc. 

Browns. 

Vandyke brown. 
Umber. 

Purples. 

All purples resulting from the mixture 
of any of the prohibited reds or blues. 



Blues. 

Prussian blue, or ferrocyanide of iron. 
Indigo. 

Antwerp blue, a preparation of Prus- 
sian blue. 
Cobalt. 
Smalt, a glass of cobalt. 



70 



CONFECTIONERY. 



List of Colors, the Use of Wkich May Be 
Permitted. 



Greens. 

Sap green (juice of Rharnnus catharti- 
cus) . 

Yellow lake, or French berries, and in- 
digo. 

Any of the vegetable yellows, or lakes, 
with indigo, including Persian ber- 
ries and indigo. 



List of Colors, the Use of Wliich Should be 
Prohibited. 

Blue verditer, or sesquicarbonate of 
copper. 

Ultramarine, a double silicate of alum- 
ina and soda, with sulphuret of so- 
dium. 

German or artificial ultramarine, which 
resembles in its composition natural 
ultramarine. 

Greens. 

The three false Brunswick greens, be- 
ins mixtures of the chromates of lead 
and indigo. 

Mineral green, green verditer, or sub- 
carbonate of copper. 

Verdigris, or diacetate of copper. 

Emerald green, or arsenite of copper. 

The true Brunswick greens, or oxy- 
chlorides of copper. 

False Verditer, or subsulphate of cop- 
per and chalk. 

The Various Bronze Powders. 

Gold, silver, and copper bronzes ; these 
consist of alloys, in different propor- 
tions, of copper and zinc. 

White lead, or carbonate of lead. 



There are very few, if any, of the colors in the right-hand 
column which have not been used by the American, as well as the 
French confectioner, though as we have observed, public senti- 
ment has lately compelled a partial abatement of the practice. A 
new class of colors, known as aniline dyes, and prepared from 
crude petroleum and coal tar, have also come into use within the 
past few years, and are quite extensively employed by the con- 
fectioners as well as by jelly manufacturers and others. As they 
are all apt to be more or less contaminated with arsenic and other 
poisons, their use is attended with danger. 

The use of papers, colored with poisonous coloring, as a 
wrapping for candy, has long since been prohibited in France, Bel- 
gium and Switzerland, and in France the manufacturer is not only 
forbidden to use colored paper for this purpose, but is compelled 
to put his name on every package of confectionery, and is held 
responsible for all results that may follow its consumption. As 
the child is apt at any time to put the paper in its mouth, and even 
to swallow it, it is readily seen that poisoning might occur from 
this source however pure and unadulterated the candy itself. 

The oils and essences with which confectionery is flavored are 
often of a very dangerous character, and the only reason that can 



CONFECTIONERY. 71 

be assigned for their not being more frequently the cause of acci- 
dents and death, is the small quantity in which they are taken into 
the stomach at any one time. As it is, they have been known to 
produce the most alarming and even fatal results. What these 
poisons are and the methods of their manufacture will be found 
described in the chapter in this volume upon " Flavoring Oils and 
Extracts. " 

A large number of samples of candy were analyzed by the 
late Prof. Blaney, of Chicago, with a view of ascertaining the ex- 
tent to which terra-alba was used as an adulterant. The results 
of his investigations were simply appalling. In one sample of 
lozenges, procured from one of the most popular confectioners of 
the city, he found this indigestible and therefore deleterious sub- 
stance to be present to the extent of 42 per cent. In numerous 
other samples he found as much as 25 and even 30 per cent. 

No adulterant will so effectually cheapen confectionery as this 
white earth, a fact which readily accounts for its very general use. 
"While its specific gravity is greater than that of sugar it can be 
purchased for about one-eighth the cost of confectioner's sugar. 
Starch, which is also used largely for adulteration, costs more and 
does not supply as much weight. 



72 TEAS. 



CHAPTEE XL 
TEAS. 



" I have several lots of tea, sir, which do not exactly suit my 
trade. Can you fix them for me ? " 

" Have you samples with you ? " 

" Yes, sir. This is a sample of gunpowder which seems to have 
lost its 'facing.' Can you restore it ? " 

" Certainly." 

" And can you heighten the color of this sample ? " 

" I can. " 

Such was the conversation held between the writer and a pro- 
fessional manipulator of teas in one of the Western cities. 

The almost universal use of tea renders its purity, or at least 
its freedom from poisonous adulterants, a matter of the greatest 
importance. That its adulteration has been carried on to some 
extent in this country and is practiced upon a stupendous scale in 
China and Japan is a fact well understood by those who have in- 
vestigated the subject. Indeed most of the adulterations in this 
country and in England are only in imitation of those practiced 
by the Chinese and Japanese themselves. The adulterations by 
the Chinese are fully described by Dr. Hassall* under the four fol- 
lowing heads : 

1. With foreign leaves. 

2. With lie-tea. 

3. With mineral substances. 

4. With materials used for the coloration, painting or facing of 
tea. 

The teas freest from admixture with foreign leaves are the 
better grades of black teas, while those which are most adulterated 



*IIassaU's "Food and its Adulterations.' 



TEAS. 73 

in this manner are the very low-priced and much broken teas, and 
the lower qualities of black and green gunpowder teas. Dr. Dixon, 
of England, writing from China, many years ago, stated that the 
Chinese annually dry many millions of pounds of ash, plumb, and 
other leaves to mix with teas. Dr. Hassall says : " The teas in 
which foreign leaves are liable to be met with are Congou and 
Souchong, but especially Twankay, gunpowder, caper and lie-tea, 
which latter is made up in imitation of these and other descriptions 
of tea, and is often used to adulterate the ordinary black teas of 
commerce." 

Lie-tea seems to have been given its name because it is 
spurious and for the most part not tea at all. While it is composed 
in some cases in part of the dust of tea-leaves, it more frequently 
consists wholly of foreign leaves, sand, quartz, and magnetic ox- 
ide of iron — all these being made up with great skill and ingenuity, 
by means of a solution of starch, into little masses of various 
forms and sizes in imitation of different kinds of tea. These 
masses, if intended for the adulteration of ordinary black tea, as 
Congou, are unpainted or unfaced, but if designed to imitate caper 
or Shulon tea they are coated with plumbago (black lead) , and if 
gunpowder, with Prussian blue, turmeric, China clay, or other min- 
eral powder. Analysis has shown that these lie-teas are often 
composed of very large quantities of mineral matter, of which 
silex and magnetic oxide of iron form a considerable proportion. 
In 44 samples of teas analyzed by Hassall this percentage of min- 
eral matter was found to vary as follows: In caper teas from 8.22 
to 24.94 per cent., in mixed black teas from 9.51 to 12.54 per cent., 
in gunpowder from 8.32 to 33.49 per cent., and in mixed green 
teas from 13.96 to 21.83 percent. The quantities of magnetic 
oxide of iron extracted by the magnet varied from 0.36 in black 
teas to 8.76 in green gunpowder. 

The fourth kind of adulteration, the artificial coloring of teas, 
is resorted to to improve the appearance of certain descriptions 
of tea, generally the inferior qualities, for the better concealment 
of certain adulterations, as where foreign leaves are used, and to 
disguise more effectually the nature of lie-tea. Several kinds of 
both black and green teas are liable to be thus artificially coated 
or colored. The black-coated teas are those known as Scented 
Caper, or black gunpowder, Orange Pekoe, and the black variety 
of lie-tea. But it is with green teas that the practice of artificial 
coloration most prevails. The principal green teas thus colored 
are Twankay, Hyson Skin, Young Hyson, Hyson, Imperial and 



74 TEAS. 

Gunpowder. Nearly if not quite all these are names familiar to 
the American tea-drinker. "Some few years since," says Dr. 
Hassall, "it was impossible to meet with a Chinese green tea which 
was not thus artificially coated, but recently samples of uncolored 
green have occasionally been brought under our notice. Further 
the Indian green teas are almost always free from coloring ma- 
terial, and the Chinese tea, Oolong, which, though desciibed as a 
black, is really a green tea, is equally free from coloring." 

The pigmentary matters usually used in coloring or facing 
teas are Prussian blue, turmeric, China clay, indigo, sulphate of 
lime, and silicate of magnesia. These are mixed in various pro- 
portions so as to produce different shades of blue and green. 
The leaves are agitated with the mixture, usually in a kuo, or iron 
vessel, in which they are subjected to the action of heat, which 
renders them moist and flacid until they become faced or glazed, 
a,s it is termed. 

Mr. Ball, writing from China of this coloring of teas, speaks of it 
xis "a great abuse that ought to be discouraged by brokers and 
dealers." He also adds that it is very injurious to flavor. 

As we have observed the adulterations of teas in this country 
have been in principle the same as those practiced in China, with 
this addition, viz : the working over of exhausted tea-leaves. A 
case of this was brought to the attention of the writer, where the 
exhausted leaves were collected from the hotels and restaurants 
.and mixed with a solution of gum, catechu, and sulphate of iron to 
re-dye them. The gum supplied in a measure the place of the ex- 
tractive matter removed from the leaves by their previous use, 
and the catechu and the sulphate of iron gave the solution astring- 
ency and color. 

Another actual case of the wholesale doctoring of teas occurred, 
not many years ago, in the city of New York. A fire occurred in an 
extensive tea warehouse and a large stock of teas, both green and 
black, were so badly damaged by water and smoke as to be sold 
for about 6 cents per pound. Falling into the hands of an expert 
manipulator they were so skilfully treated as to be readily sold 
again at about the market price of undamaged teas. 

It is a noteworthy fact that nearly all the teas exported from 
Japan are consumed in the United States, about two-fifths of our 
■entire tea consumption being of the Japanese leaves. What are 
known in the trade as uncolored Japs, though frequently pur- 
chased for a black, are really a green tea. A variety of Japanese 
tea known as "basket fired" is also of quite common use and so 



TEAS. 75 

far as our investigation has extended is generally a strictly pure 
tea. 

Within the past few years the adulteration and manipulation 
of teas in the United States would seem to have decreased in about 
the same ratio that the price has declined. During and immediately 
after the late war the high price of tea gave an unwonted incen- 
tive to fraud in this as in other lines of business, whereas at the 
present writing nearly all the adulteration of the teas consumed in 
this country takes place in China and Japan before the article is 
shipped. 

As the detection of many of the adulterations of tea is at- 
tended with more or less difficulty, the presence of foreign leaves 
being discernable only with the aid of the microscope, the writer 
can give no better advice to those desiring to avoid imposition 
than this : Select those varieties which we have referred to as 
being most generally unadulterated. If your tea merchant is an 
expert, and in some measure every intelligent dealer should be, 
consult him and be governed by his judgment rather than by 
your own whim or predilection. 



76 COFFEE. 



CHAPTER XII. 
COFFEE. 



If the famous wooden nutmeg has proven to the world the 
marvelous resources of Yankee ingenuity, the inventive genius of 
England has been no less indisputably established by a certain 
Mr. Duckworth, of Liverpool, who as early as 1850 took out a pat- 
ent for moulding chicory root into the shape of coffee seeds. Un- 
der the operation of the excellent law of Great Britain, prohibiting 
fraud and adulteration in the manufacture and sale of articles of 
food, Mr. Duckworth's occupation as a coffee fabricator, has, no 
doubt, gone, but the memory of what he might have done for 
mankind, if uninterrupted by Parliament, must insure for him a 
prominent and permanent place among the masters of the art of 
imitation. 

"We are not aware that any American has yet succeeded 
in producing a substitute for the unground coffee seed. It is 
true, that dusty and damaged coffee is frequently subjected to 
a process of brushing to restore its brightness, a machine for this 
purpose having been contrived and patented many years ago, but 
nothing, we believe, is added to or taken from the seed before it 
is ground. The identity of the seed being once destroyed, how- 
ever, the opportunities for adulteration are without limit. To 
such an extent has this adulteration been carried, in fact, that even 
the generally credulous consumer has finally been made skeptical 
as to the genuineness and purity of an article which is offered to 
him roasted, ground and ready for use at a price one-third and 
often one-half less than is charged for the green and unground 
seeds. This tacit admission of the fraud has, no doubt, done 
more than anything else to cause the marked decrease in the con- 
sumption of ground coffees which has taken place within the past 
few years. 

There may be such a thing found as an unadulterated ground 



COFFEE. 77 

coffee, but a somewhat persistent search on our part has utterly 
failed to discover it. The most that can be said in favor of the best 
samples we have examined is, that they are only a mixture of cof- 
fee and chicory. Chicory indeed is among the most common 
adulterants used, and, as it is really esteemed by some as impart- 
ing- an improved flavor to the coffee, it is the least fraudulent. It 
too often occurs, however, that that which is put up and sold as a 
mixture of chicory, and coffee consists of little else than adulter- 
ated chicory, as chicory itself is adulterated with mangold-wurzel, 
parsnip, carrot, acorns and even sawdust! 

To enumerate the other articles which investigation shows to 
be mixed with the ground coffees of the shops would require little 
less than a page in this volume. In the category are a countless 
variety of seeds, roasted peas, beans, acorns, sawdust, oak bark 
tan, and lastly the baked liver of both the ox and horse. 

The following with reference to the use of baked horses' liver 
occurs in a volume, published in London several years ago, under 
the title of " Coffee As It Is and As It Ought to Be " : 

" In various parts of the metropolis are to be found liver bak- 
ers. These men take the livers of oxen and horses, bake them, 
and grind them into a powder, which they sell to the low-priced 
coffee-shop keepers at from 4d. to Gd. per pound, the horse's 
liver bringing the highest price." 

The writer is prepared to state, from actual knowledge, that 
baked liver has also been used as a coffee adulterant in this 
country. 

As the adulteration of coffee with many of the articles men- 
tioned above has a tendency to alter and reduce the color and 
general appearance of the article, as well as the liquor produced 
with its aid, the use of artificial coloring matter is rendered neces- 
sary. For this purpose burnt sugar is sometimes used, also 
Venetian red and other substances. 

The inability to procure coffees in the South, owing to the 
blockade which existed during the late war, brought into tempo- 
rary use numberless substitutes, such as roasted rye, burnt sugar, 
okra, and dried and parched sweet potato* It is safe to say that 
much of the stuff offered to-day as ground coffee is little, if any, 
better than these Southern substitutes. 

In view of the foregoing facts, about the only sensible advice 
the writer can give his readers with regard to purchasing ground 
coffee is, " Don't do it. " 



78 COCOA AND CHOCOLATE. 



CHAPTER XIII. 
COCOA AND CHOCOLATE. 



The authorities give the following description of the cocoa 
tree: 

" It is a small but handsome tree, indigenous to the West 
Indies and Central America. ' It grows spontaneously in Mexico 
and on the coast of Caraccas, and forms whole forests in Demerara. 
It is cultivated also in the Mauritius and in the French island of 
Bourbon.' 

" The seeds or beans are enclosed in a pod or fruit somewhat 
like that of a cucumber, being usually about five inches long, and 
three and a half in diameter. Each fruit contains in general from 
twenty to thirty beans, disposed in five rows, which are divided 
from each other by partitions. Occupying the divisions of the 
fruit and surrounding the seeds is a rose-colored spongy substance, 
resembling that of water-melons. 

" The above description applies to fruits of average size; some- 
times the fruits are so large, especially those grown in Central 
America, that they contain as many as from forty to fifty seeds; 
while others, as those grown in the West India Islands, Berbice, 
and Demerara, are much smaller, and enclose only from six to fif- 
teen seeds. 

" During maturation the fruits change from green to dark yel- 
low; they are then plucked, o.pened, the seeds cleared of the 
spongy substance, and spread out to dry in the air. 

" In the West Indies, immediately that they are dried, the 
beans are packed up and are ready for the market ; but in the 
Caraccas they are subjected to slight fermentation ; for this pur- 
pose they are either put into chests or tubs, which are covered 
over with boards, the beans being turned over every morning to 
equalize the fermentation, or else they are put into pits or trenches 
dug in the earth. Lastly, they are exposed to the sun and dried. 



COCOA AND CHOCOLATE. 19 

" During the process the beans emit a good deal of moisture, 
lose weight, as well as part of their bitterness and acrimony. 

" The seeds which have undergone the process of fermentation 
are considered the best; they are larger, of a darker brown color, 
and after roasting, throw off their husks readily, and split easily 
into several pieces or lobes. They have an agreeable mildly bitter 
taste, without acrimony. 

" The beans of Guiana and West India cocoas, while they are 
smaller, flatter, smoother, and of a lighter color, are also more 
sharp and bitter to the taste. ' They answer best for the attrac- 
tion of the butter of cocoa, but afford a less aromatic and agree- 
able chocolate.' 

"Previous to being used, the beans are roasted in an appa- 
ratus similar to that of a coffee-roaster. When the aroma is well 
developed the roasting is known to be finished. The beans are 
turned out, cooled, and freed from their outer husks by fanning 
and sifting, the inner shell-like husk remaining unbroken. By the 
roasting, part of the starch is converted into dextrin, and a little 
of the fat into fatty acids. 

" Cocoa has been in use in Mexico from time immemorial. It 
was introduced into Europe by the Spaniards in 1520, and by them 
it was long kept a secret from the rest of the world. " 

We are told that as a nutritive cocoa stands very much 
higher than either tea or coffee in consequence of the larger quan- 
tities of starch, gluten and fat contained in it. The consumption 
of cocoa in our own country, is very small as compared with that 
of either tea or coffee. It is sufficiently used, however, to justify 
our giving attention to the subject of its purity. 

The article of chocolate, which is of more common use with 
us, is a mixture of cocoa with other substances. 

Very much of the prepared cocoa and chocolate consumed by 
us is put up and manufactured in Europe and particularly in 
France, where its adulteration occurs. There are several large 
establishments devoted to their manufacture, however, in this 
country, the products of which we have found to vary in character 
all the way from the best to the most inferior samples of the for- 
eign article. 

From the English works of Mitchell and Normandy, we learn 
the following with reference to the adulterations practiced in that 
country and in France. 

Mitchell says: 

" Chocolate is adulterated with flour, potato starch, and sugar, 



SO COCOA AND CHOCOLATE. 

together with cocoa-nut oil, lard, or even tallow. Even the so-, 
called finest chocolate is made up with clarified mutton suet and 
common sugar, together with ordinary cocoa. 

" If in breaking chocolate it is gravelly — if it melt in the mouth 
without leaving a cool, refreshing taste— if it, on the addition of 
hot water, becomes thick and pasty — and, lastly, if it form a ge- 
latinous mass on cooling, it is adulterated with starch and such- 
like substances. 

"Where earthy and other solid substances are«deposited from 
chocolate mixed with water, either the beans have not been well 
cleansed, inferior sugar has been employed, or mineral substances 
have been added to it, either for the purpose of coloring or of in- 
creasing its weight. 

" Moreover, when chocolate has a kind of cheesy taste, animal 
fat has been added; and when very rancid, either vegetable oil, or 
even the seeds themselves, have been employed in the sophistica- 
tion. 

" The mineral substances employed in the making up of choc- 
olate are some of the ochres, both red and yellow, together with 
minium (red lead), vermilion, sulphate of lime, chalk, etc. Choc- 
olates so adulterated, more especially with the preparations of 
lead, are highly injurious; it is, however, only the inferior choc- 
olates that arc thus adulterated." 

Normandy, who had thoroughly investigated the subjected, 
wrote as follows : 

" Unfortunately, however, many of the preparations of the 
cocoa-nut sold under the names of chocolate, of cocoa flakes, and 
of chocolate powder, consist of a most disgusting mixture of bad 
or musty cocoa-nuts, with their shells, coarse sugar of the very 
lowest quality, ground with potato starch, old sea-biscuits, coarse 
branny flour, animal fat (generally tallow (, ®r even greaves. I 
have known cocoa powder made of potato starch, moistened with 
a decoction of cocoa-nut shells, and sweetened with treacle; choc- 
olate made of the same materials, with the additions of tallow and 
of ochre. I have also met with chocolate in which brick-dust or 
red ochre had been introduced to the extent of 12 per cent.; an- 
other sample contained 22 per cent, of peroxide of iron, the rest 
being starch, cocoa-nuts with their shells, and tallow. Messrs. 
Jules Gamier and Harel assert that cinnabar and red lead have 
been found in certain samples of chocolate, and that serious acci- 
dents had been caused by that diabolical adulteration. Genuine 
chocolate is of a dark brown color; that which has been adulter- 



COCOA AND CHOCOLATE. 81 

ated is "generally redder, though this brighter hue is sometimes 
g'ven to excellent chocolate, especially in Spain, by means of a 
little annatto. This addition is unobjectionable, provided the an- 
natto is pure, which, however, is not always the case." 



S2 MEATS. 



CHAPTER XIV. 
MEATS. 



The subject of food adulteration naturally leads to the con- 
sideration of unwholesome and diseased meats, and perhaps in no 
other article that comes to the table is greater care requisite than 
in the selection of proper animal food. 

In nearly all large cities the system of abattoirs and municipal 
inspection prevents the offering for sale of meat that is known to 
be diseased or positively injurious to the public health, but offi- 
cials are too often lax in performing their duties, and there are 
always plenty of meat venders who do not scruple to sell any- 
thing that will return a good profit, no matter how filthy or un- 
wholesome it mav be. 

In all sound flesh the muscles should be firm and elastic, pale 
for the young animals and darker for the old ones. A deep pur- 
ple color is good evidence that the animal died without being bled; 
such meat is, of course, unfit for food. Diseased meat can usually 
be detected by the unpleasant odor, also by the wet, flabby and 
sodden appearance, the fat, in the language of Letheby, " looking 
like jelly or wet parchment." The condition of the lungs, the 
liver and the spleen affords the most conclusive proof to the in- 
spector of the presence of disease in the animal, but the con- 
sumer of course has no opportunity for making such an examina- 
tion. The marrow in the leg-bones should be of a light, rosy red 
color for twenty -four hours after killing. If the marrow is soft, 
brownish in color, or if it shows black points, the animal has been 
sick and putrefaction has commenced. 

The microscope is particularly valuable in examining meats, as 
it reveals the presence of any parasites and shows whether the 
texture of the muscles has been changed by decomposition or dis- 
ease. 



MEATS. 83 

It is a well-established fact, that the flesh of animals, although 
not diseased, may nevertheless be poisonous by reason of some 
poisonous food taken by the animal previous to being killed. 
Birds, fed on a certain species of berry, become poisonous, yet 
the birds seem as active and healthy as ever, and nothing can be 
detected in the flesh. So we have numerous instances of severe 
and even fatal sickness from eating flesh of cattle or hogs, when 
no trace of actual poison could be discovered. 

When cattle are overdriven or worried or bruised, the animals 
become feverish and the meat is diseased and unwholesome in 
consequence. 

Professor Lamgee, speaking of the maladies of cattle, says: — 
" Many of the worst forms of disease are very sudden and only 
slightly affect the color and texture of the muscular apparatus. A 
fine fat bullock, with florid meat, may have died from splenic 
apoplexy, or been merely killed pro forma, when already on the 
point of death. Remove the spleen and the carcass appears 
sound. Yet, dogs and pigs die from eating any portion of such 
cattle. " 

Morand, in his " Histoire d'une Maladie trrs-singulaicre," 
says: " If the blood or raw flesh of any overdriven animal be ap- 
plied to a scratch, or on the unbroken skin of a human being, a 
dangerous and often fatal inflammation is excited." He has not 
witnessed such an affect where this flesh has been cooked and 
eaten. Still we should not feel safe in trying the experiment. An 
eruption of gangrenous boils (postulus malignes of the French) is 
often present in these cases, and it is by no means improbable 
that the fatal results which have been attributed to the mere 
handling of the flesh where there was no abrasion of the skin, 
were due to the use of it as food. 

The large packing establishments are obliged to exercise the 
greatest care in selecting animals for slaughtering, as in the rush 
of killing and cutting up the carcasses, the workmen are often very 
careless. We have positive evidence that in some instances in 
the packing houses, the knife has laid open an ugly abcess or a 
malignant postule in the flesh, and the workmen proceeded with- 
out the slightest pause or the least effort to remove the injured 
portion. The plea urged in such cases by the men, is, that it takes 
too much time to trim out the bad portion. 

It is very true that salt is a ^reat purjfyer and antiseptic, and 
that it neutralizes many injurious things, otherwise such careless 
workmen would have much to answer for in the way of disease 
and death amongst the unfortunate consumers. 



84 MEATS. 

The most fruitful source of danger to public health, however, 
is from meats in which the process of decay has been allowed to 
commence. 

Christison, one of the leading authorities on this point, says : 
" Naturally wholesome or harmless animal matters may become 
instant poisons through the ordinary process of putrefaction; the 
mere commencement of decay is sufficient to render meat poison- 
ous to those unaccustomed to its use." The same writer in his 
work on poisons, says: "Game, or other meat, only decayed 
enough to please the palate of the epicure, has caused severe 
cholera in those unaccustomed to its use. " The usual symptoms 
in such cases of poisoning are shivering, giddiness, headache, 
burning fever, diarrhoea and vomiting; sometimes these symptoms 
are accompanied by delirium, a fetid salivation and ulcer of the 
mouth. In very severe cases, collapse, involuntary stools, and 
great prostration precedes death. On dissection, the alimentary 
mucus membrane has been found softened and the intestinal fol- 
licles ulcerated. 

It has been well said that the human stomach is long suffer- 
ing and that it will adapt itself to almost any kind of imposition. 
By constant and increasing doses, quantities of deadly poisons, 
such as arsenic or opium may be taken with impunity, which 
would be sufficient to kill a dozen persons who had not undergone 
such previous training. So it is that epicures can feast without 
danger on game or meats, tainted to such an extent as to be abso- 
lutely poisonous to a novice in this particular department of gas- 
tronomy. Some tribes of savages go even further and rather en- 
joy rancid oil, putrid blubber and stinking offal. The Digger In- 
dians, as is well known, relish very much a dish made up of the 
putrid entrails of animals. The fact remains, however, that to 
the ordinary mortal tainted meat is unwholesome and must be 
resolutely guarded against. 

Where the meat to be pickled or cured is not allowed to thor- 
oughly cool off before being subjected to the curing process, the 
worst results are very apt to follow. The natural or animal heat 
should entirely disappear before the flesh is handled. 

From the foregoing it will be understood that the duties of 
the health officers are by no means light, and it is only by the ex- 
ercise of the utmost vigilance that the sale of such dangerous 
meats is prohibited. Indeed, few people have any adequate idea 
of the amount of this meat that is daily condemned to the render- 
ing tanks or the fertilizer factories in all our large cities. 



CANNED MEAT. 85 



CHAPTER XV. 
CANNED MEAT. 



The business of putting up canned and cooked meats, ready 
for immediate consumption, has greatly increased during the past 
few years, owing principally to the improved methods adopted, 
which have resulted in a steadily growing demand for these canned 
goods. They now occupy an important position in bur export 
trade, as well as being largely consumed at home, and their 
convenience and economy are universally recognized. 

Some of the largest meat canning establishments in the world 
are located in Chicago, and personal observation at these places 
warrants us in saying that there are no grounds for complaint on 
the score of adulteration or injury to the public health. Acting on 
the sound business maxim that success can only be assured by 
maintaining a high standard, the proprietors of these establish- 
ments seem to be scrupulously careful in every detail. 

For the cooked corned beef the best grass fed cattle are slaugh- 
tered, all swill fed, diseased, bruised or emaciated animals being 
rejected. The same care is exercised also in cutting up and cook- 
ing the meat. Nothing is allowed to remain that would in any 
way affect the quality of the product. 

The process while a very simple one, requires the exercise of 
the greatest care and watchfulness. After cooking, the meat is 
pressed into the cans and the cans soldered up. It is then treated 
in the cans with a steam bath to ensure even a more thorough 
cooking, and at the same time to expel the air through a small 
hole left open in the cans. When removed from the steam bath 
the cans are at once hermetically closed and the contents will re- 
main unchanged for an indefinite period. 



86 CANNED MEAT. 

No flavoring or coloring matter is used, the salt being deemed 
all sufficient. The unvarying excellence of the meat so packed 
has given these Chicago establishments a world-wide reputation 
and their trade is something enormous. 

It is not to be supposed, however, that the successful firms 
would have no imitators, and from such imitators we may expect 
inferior goods. Meat-canning establishments have sprung up at 
various points throughout the country, and some of them are man- 
aged with an almost criminal carelessness. 

In towns where there are no public abattoirs and no meat in- 
spectors, the killing as a rule is done in a reckless manner, and the 
meat is often improperly handled. Diseased and tainted meat 
also, is no doubt often placed in the cooking kettles, the salt, and 
sometimes an addition of soda being depended upon for covering 
up all suspicions of the putrid portions. 

The improper and insufficient cooking is another evil. In some 
instances it has been found that meat had not been cooked enough 
to preserve it, and it became putrid in the cans. 

The occasional cases of poisoning reported from eating prepar- 
ed beef no doubt could be traced to such causes. Instances have 
also come to light where a lot of inferior meat has been treated 
with coloring matter of a very questionable natrre for the purpose 
of improving appearances. 

The meat cans themselves demand a share of attention. Some 
houses are induced by a false economy, to use the cheapest grades 
of tin, which, as has been shown elsewhere, are largely coated with 
lead. It has been argued that this lead is responsible for sickness 
which has sometimes followed the eating of prepared meats. This, 
however, can hardly be possible. In putting up the meat, salt 
and saltpetre are the only substances generally used. The salt is 
chemically chloride of sodium and the saltpetre is nitrate of pot- 
ash. If either the chlorine or the nitric acid were free they would 
quickly combine with the lead and form a poisonous salt, but in 
both cases they are already combined with their strongest bases. 
The chemical affinity of chlorine for sodium is very much stronger 
than for lead, and therefore the salt does not act on the lead even 
when it is present. For the same reason saltpetre does not com- 
bine with the lead. 

The main objection to the use of the cheap qualities of tin 
would seem to be that the tin is liable to crack in working, and so 
make it almost impossible to secure the perfect hermetrie sealing 
of the cans necessary for the preservation of the meat, therefore, 



CANNED MEAT. 87 

in order to secure the best grades of tin plates, the proprietors of 
the great and pioneer canning establishment at Chicago, place 
their specifications in the hands of the manufacturers in Great 
Britain, and rigidly require of them that none but the very best 
metals be furnished. 

In the manufacture of cans, it has been the custom with most 
manufacturers, to make use of resin and various acids in solder- 
ing and sealing them. While not absolutely injurious, this pro- 
cess is not free from grave objections, and we have observed that 
here also the larger Chicago packers have demonstrated their de- 
sire and ability to maintain the high reputation that their goods 
have obtained throughout the world, by avoiding the use of either 
resin or any acid in the manufacture and sealing of their cans. 
They use as a flux, for soldering, palm oil. 



88 VINEGAR. 



CHAPTER XVI. 
VINEGAR. 



It is primarily proper to observe with regard to vinegar that 
there is none so wholesome, or free from elements deleterious to 
health, as that which is made from fruit, either the apple or the 
grape. Apple-cider vinegar is the better known and more gener- 
ally consumed of the two in our own country, the pure acid prod- 
uct of the grape being so rarely met with that it is hardly worthy 
of mention in these pages. 

The ingenuity which has manifested itself in supplying a cheap 
substitute for an adulteration of nearly every article that goes 
upon the table is by no means lacking among the manufacturers 
of this most common condiment and preservative. 

The substitutes for fruit- vinegars, compounds which are usu- 
ally placed upon the market as " pure cider vinegar " or " white 
wine vinegar," should be divided into two classes, the one coming 
under the head of inferior, while the other is deserving of no 
milder designation than poisonous. The latter no less than the 
former is largely sold for table use, as well as for manufacturing 
pickles. 

The vinegars which we have classed as simply inferior to the 
fruit vinegars, are the result of the acidification or oxidation, 
which takes place in passing a solution of distilled spirit (gener- 
ally highwines) and water, in the proportion relatively of about 
ten and ninety parts, through wood shavings, birch twigs, corn 
cobs or other substances. These are generally known to the trade 
as highwine vinegars and when properly manufactured and un- 
tampered with beyond the addition of coloring, which is usually 
burnt sugar, they cannot be regarded as other than harmless and 
wholesome. The coloring is usually added when it is desirtvl to 
represent them to the consumer as cider vinegar. When they are 



VINEGAK. 89 

sold as white wine vinegar, the addition of the coloring is un- 
necessary. 

Formerly the spirit used in the manufacture of this class 
of vinegar (and its production then was comparatively light) 
was procured from the distilleries. A recent act of Congress, 
however, has permitted the vinegar-maker to produce a low 
wine direct from the grain, and most of the larger manufac- 
turers have availed themselves of this privilege, so that this class 
of vinegar has come to be manufactured in much larger quantities. 
It has also come to be called " new process vinegar. " 

The substitution of glucose or grape sugar for the distilled 
spirit is extensively practiced by manufacturers to produce an- 
other and a cheaper grade of vinegar than the above. And it is to 
this latter class, particularly, that mineral acids are often added 
and in quantities which render them dangerous. It is this class of 
vinegars, in fact, which in their adulterated forms we have seen fit 
to designate poisonous, and which under a proper sanitary law, 
would be so labeled. 

Muriatic or hydro-chloric acid is the more frequent adulter- 
ant, though in our own investigations and in the analyses made by 
Dr. Williams, we have found also sulphuric acid. 

The manufacturer is allowed, under the English law, to add 
one one-thousandth part of sulphuric acid to his vinegar, though 
Dr. Hassall condemns the introduction of even this small quantity. 

Another danger to be apprehended from the careless manu- 
facture of vinegar is contamination with the poisonous metals, 
and particularly copper. This is apt to occur from the action of 
the acid upon the copper vessels used in the process of manufac- 
turing. 

Out of twenty-four samples of vinegar recently analyzed by 
the Health Department of Chicago, one sample was found to be 
so strongly impregnated with copper, that the prevention of its 
sale was recommended. 

In a recent letter to Mr. Geo. T. Angell, of Boston, Prof. Geo. 
A. Marriner says : " I have in several cases found sugar of lead in 
vinegar. I use no vinegar myself. I look with suspicion upon our 
vinegar. I use fruit acids in place of it, — lemon-juice, etc." 



90 PICKLES. 



CHAPTER XVII. 
PICKLES. 



The facts presented in the preceding chapter furnish sufficient 
reason for our regarding with suspicion most of the vegetable 
substances preserved by the antiseptic power of vinegar. Not 
only is a pure vinegar the very first essential to the preparation of 
a wholesome pickle, but our observation would lead us to believe 
that the evil effects so frequently charged to the indigestible 
pickle, are in very many cases margable rather to the impurities 
and poisons in the vinegar in which it is preserved. Other poisons 
how 7 ever are frequently added in the process of pickle making, and 
notably copper. By the aid of this pernicious metal the manufac- 
turer imparts to the vegetables a fixed and pleasing green which 
renders them so attractive to the eye and tempting to the palate 
of the thoughtless. We say of the thoughtless, since a moment's 
reflection must suggest the fact that the color is an unnatural one 
and must be imparted by artificial means. The cucumber is 
never so green upon the vine as we have seen it in the bottle and 
upon our pickle plates. 

The use of copper as a coloring matter for pickles would seem, 
indeed, to have found its origin in the household before its adop- 
tion in the factories, and its use is even suggested in most of the 
cook-books. Dr. Accum, of England, in his celebrated work, 
" Death in the Pot," takes occasion to observe that numerous 
fatal consequences are known to have ensued from the eating of 
pickles "to which the fresh and pleasing hue had been imparted 
according to the deadly formulae laid down in modern cookery 
books, such as boiling the pickle with halfpence (copper coin) or 
suffering them to stand for a considerable period in brazen 
vessels." 



PICKLES. 91 

Among other similar recipes, Dr. Hassall also takes occasion 
to particularly condemn the following: 

"To pickle gherkins. — Boil the vinegar in a bell-metal or cop- 
per pot ; pour it boiling hot on your cucumbers. 

"To make greening. — Take a bit of verdigris the bigness of a 
hazelnut, finely powdered, half a pint of distilled vinegar, and a bit 
of alum powder, with a little bay salt. Put all in a bottle, shake it 
and let it stand till clear. Put a small teaspoonful into codlings, 
or whatever you wish to green. " 

It is entirely within bounds to say that not one of the very 
green cucumber pickles found in the grocery shops is free from 
copper, while the amount of the metal present is frequently so 
great as to be absolutely dangerous. Dr. Percival, in "Medical 
Transactions," gives the case of a young lady who ate freely 
pickles thus impregnated with copper. She soon complained of 
pain in the stomach, and in five days vomiting commenced which 
was incessant for two days. After this her stomach became pro- 
digiously distended, and in nine days after eating the pickles she 
died. 

In the preceding chapter we have shown the frequency with 
which sulphuric acid is found in vinegars of the cheaper grades, 
grades that aie most frequently used in the pickle factories. 
Add to this dangerous acid the copper for coloring, and there is 
straightway formed sulphate of copper. 

A wholesale druggist of Chicago admitted to the writer that 
he had for some time been selling verdigris to a pickle manufac- 
turer in large quantities without suspecting the use to which it was 
being applied. He finally learned that it was employed for color- 
ing, though not until after his own family had consumed several 
jars of the identical pickles. 

In conversation with an extensive manufacturer the danger at- 
tending the use of copper was referred to by us. He admitted all 
that we urged against the use of the pernicious metal, and added 
that he had abandoned it altogether and was selling an uncolored 
pickle only. "But," he continued, "the green pickles are much 
more attractive to the eye and therefore more salable. You see 
that I state on all my labels : 'These pickles contain no poisonous 
greening,' and if I can only educate the consumer to understand 
that the only wholesome pickles are those that are uncolored I 
shall be satisfied." 

Fourteen samples of pickles purchased promiscuously from 
the grocery shops were analyzed by us with the following results: 



92 PICKLES. 

In nine cases out of the fourteen the vinegar was more or less 
impregnated with mineral acid. 

In thirteen out of the fourteen samples copper was discovered 
in quantities varying from a small to a highly dangerous amount. 

The one sample in which no trace of copper was found was a 
bottle of gherkins which were of a yellowish rather than a green 
hue. 

In two samples sulphate of copper was found in poisonous 
amounts. 

The article of chow-chow the dressing for which is often most 
foully adulterated, is referred to in the chapter on spices and 
sauces. 



SPICES, SAUCES, ETC. 93 



CHAPTEE XVIII. 
SPICES, SAUCES, ETC. 



The variety of articles comprehended under the general head 
of condiments are so numerous that only a brief mention of each, 
and the fraud and adulteration practiced in their manufacture and 
preparation, can be made within the limits of a single chapter. 
Suffice it to observe in a general way, that it is very difficult to 
procure from the spice mill or the sauce maker an article that is 
unmixed with foreign substances, or that is really what the label 
represents it to be. Dr. Piper, a well-known analyst and micro- 
scopist, of Chicago, recently had occasion to examine a sample of 
ground black pepper in which he found of pepper itself barely five 
percent., the remaining ninety-five parts consisting of fibres of 
wood with a very slight admixture of cayenne to give it strength, 
and the whole ingeniously colored to imitate the appearance of 
the spice. 

If the excellent provision of the English law, requiring the 
manufacturer to print upon the label the true contents of the pack- 
age, could be enforced in our own country, there is probably no 
branch of business which would be more completely revolution- 
ized than that of the spice manufacturer. 

Mustard. — The most common adulterations of mustard are 
with wheat flour and turmeric, the first named to give bulk and the 
latter to restore the color. Forty-two samples purchased from 
London shops were analyzed by Dr. Hassall, all of which were 
found to beadulterated with flourand turmeric. Among other adul- 
terants used, both in this country and in England, are cayenne 
pepper, ginger, charloch, ground rice, clay, chromate of lead, and 
yellow ochre. One sample analyzed by us was found to contain 
flour to the amount of about 60 per cent., with cayenne pepper to 
impart pungency and yellow ochre for coloring. 



94 SPICES, SAUCES, ETC. 

A sample analyzed by Dr. Williams was found to contain, 50 
per cent, of mustard, 30 per cent, of starch, 15 per cent, of terra 
alba and 5 per cent, of cayenne. 

One sample analyzed by us, which was labeled "Double Super- 
fine," was found to be composed of a fine grade of mustard, with 
about ten per cent, of wheat flour. When used upon the table, we 
can hardly say that such mustard is other than it should be, the 
small addition of flour being necessary to modify the harshness 
of the pure ground seed, which would otherwise be too strong for 
the ordinary consumer. When sold in the drugstores, however, 
to be used in the sick room for plasters, where its full strength is 
desired, the addition of any substance calculated to weaken it must 
be regarded in the light of an adulterant and condemned. 

Black Pepper. — This article is more or less adulterated with 
linseed meal, mustard husks, wheat flour or middlings — both of 
wheat and buckwheat — pea flour, sago, rice, broken crackers 
or cracker dust, pepper dust, and a variety of woody fibre. Dr. 
Accum also mentions common clay. When the strength is de- 
stroyed by these adulterants, cayenne is used to restore it. 

Cayenne or Red Pepper.— As Dr. Hassall very correctly ob- 
serves, cayenne is subjected to even more extensive adulterations 
than ordinary black pepper. Among the more common adulter- 
ants may be enumerated mineral coloring matters, such as red 
lead, red ochre, and vermilion, Venetian red, or sulphate of mer- 
cury, ground rice, turmeric, salt, husks of white mustard seed, 
and even sawdust, particularly of such woods as mahogany. 
Both colic and paralysis have been produced by the use of cay- 
enne containing red lead. Says Dr. Hassall: " The salts of lead 
and mercury are characterized by the circumstance that they are 
apt to accumulate in the system, and so to produce symptoms of 
a very serious nature. Thus, no matter how small the quantity 
of mercury or lead introduced each day, the system is slowly and 
insidiously brought under the influence of these poisons. The 
quantity of ied lead introduced into the system in adulterated 
cayenne, is, however, by no means inconsiderable." 

Out of ten samples of cayenne analyzed by us, eight were 
found to be adulterated with starch and wheat middlings, and col- 
ored with Venetian red. 

Ginger. — In addition to being often rubbed over with lime or 
chalk, or bleached by means of a solution of chloride of lime or 
by exposure to the fumes of burning sulphur, ginger has been 



SPICES, SAUCES, ETC. 95 

found to be adulterated with sago meal, potato flour, wheat flour, 
cayenne pepper, mustard husks and turmeric powder. 

Cinnamon. — A deception, closely bordering on a fraud, is al- 
most constantly practiced, in the sale of cassia bark for cinnamon. 
While the cassia belongs to the same genus or family of plants as 
cinnamon, it is very different from cinnamon in many respects. 
The detection of the difference between the two is very simple if 
they have not been ground. As to these distinctions, Hassall ob- 
serves: " The bark of cinnamon is scarcely thicker than drawing- 
paper and breaks with an uneven and fibrous margin; while each 
stick consists of eight, ten, or more pieces or quills of bark in- 
serted one within*the other. Cassia bark is much stouter, being 
often as thick as a shilling; it breaks short and without splintering. 
But these barks differ also in color and taste. Cinnamon is paler 
and browner than cassia, which is usually red and bright. The 
taste of one is sweet, mild, and aromatic, leaving no unpleasant 
impression on the tongue, while that of the other is less sweet, 
stronger, and is followed by a bitterness." 

We have found ground cinnamon very often to be simply 
ground cassia. We have also found other adulterants quite com- 
monly used. In the samples submitted by us to Dr. Williams, he 
reports finding " little cinnamon, much cassia and considerable 
starch. " 

Nutmegs. — Not having encountered the historical wooden nut- 
meg in our researches, we are not prepared to state authoritatively 
that the nutmeg is ever imitated or adulterated in this country 
Such would not sedm to be the case, however, the world over. 

According to Rheede, the Turkish and Jewish merchants uti- 
lize the flavorless and odorless wild nutmegs of the Myristica Mal- 
abarica by mixing them with, and selling them for the cultivated 
nutmeg. 

Mr. Chevallieu also observes : 

"Nutmegs are sometimes mixed with riddled nuts, eaten by 
insects, and become brittle; the small apertures are then closed 
with a kind of cement, formed of flour, oil, and powder of nutmeg. 
This paste has even served to fabricate false nutmegs, inodorous 
and insipid. The workmen of Marseilles have even made them of 
bran, clay, and the refuse of nutmegs; these nutmegs, placed in 
contact with water, softens down in that liquid." 

Cloves. — As cloves are seldom if ever ground, we may simply 
pass them by with the remark that they are seldom if ever adulter- 
ated. 



96 SPICES, SAUCES, ETC. 

Sauces. — With regard to the countless counterfeits of English 
sauces, such as the Worcestershire, we have only to observe that 
they are generally cheap if not vile compounds, which are some- 
times put up in imitation bottles and under false labels, but more 
frequently sold in bulk to the restaurants and larger con- 
sumers, at a very low figure. The majority of them are little 
more than sweetened and colored water, cheaply flavored, and 
possessing very little strength. In lieu of serving as a relish, they 
more frequently impair the palatableness of the dish to which 
they are added. While they are the grossest kind of a fraud, we 
are not prepared to say that they contain any ingredient abso- 
lutely detrimental to health. 

Tomato and Other Catsups. — We have found the cheaper to- 
mato catsups met with in the grocery shops, to be frequently com- 
posed of other vegetable substances than the tomato, cheaply 
spiced and colored to imitate that vegetable. Pumpkin is one of 
these substitutes, and also the pulp of apples, and we have like- 
wise reason to believe that the character of pulp referred to as the 
base of the cheaper grades of apple butter is sometimes made use 
of. The very low price at which these catsups are often retailed 
would seem to sufficiently indicate their true value and virtue. 

A better grade of catsup we have found put up at the larger 
fruit and vegetable packing establishments, where the waste por- 
tions of the tomato, removed in the process of peeling the vegeta- 
ble, is utilized to excellent advantage. The peeling itself, how- 
ever, is sometimes cut up very finely, and finds its way into the 
catsup. 

The lightly consumed article of walnut catsup can be and is 
often produced without the aid of the walnut, in which case it is, to 
say the least of it, a vile fraud. 

The dressing used by the pickle manufacturers in preparing 
chow-chow is frequently a villainous compound of cheap ingredi- 
ents. In lieu of olive oil a very inferior substitute is often used, 
the character of which is disguised by the mustard. Flour is 
added in considerable quantities, and in some cases foreign color- 
ing matter is employed. 



CANNED FISH AND GAME. 97 



CHAPTER XIX. 
CANNED FISH AND GAME. 



The business of canning the products of the ocean, as well as 
several of the Northern lakes, has, within the past few years, de- 
veloped into immense proportions, and the goods thus prepared 
are not only consumed in great quantities all over our own coun- 
try, but very largely exported. An interesting volume might be 
written upon this industry alone. Not only are the oysters of the 
coast supplied in the shell, as well as in cans and kegs to the most 
remote internal points accessible by railroad, but fresh salmon and 
other salt water luxuries are packed so as to keep for an indefinite 
period of time, and even to bear shipment to the most distant for- 
eign lands. Of the salmon packed on the Pacific coast, a very 
large portion is put up expressly for exportation. 

This business, like that of packing cooked meats, is, we be- 
lieve, generally conducted honestly. The price of the canned 
oyster generally determines the size and character of the oyster, 
as well as the relative proportions of meat and water in the can. 
The leading houses in the trade have adopted a specified quan- 
tity of oysters for each size can, and such cans are known as 
"standard filled. " Cheap cans contain more water and less oysters. 

In certain sections of the country, and particularly in the 
South, cove oysters are largely consumed, and in packing these 
water is sometimes used to an extent that would seem as incred- 
ible as it is fraudulent. Our information upon this subject is de- 
rived from a member of one of the largest packing firms in the 
East. 

The cans which are often retailed as low as ten cents each are 
known to the trade as " slack filled. " In filling these cans only 
three ounces of the oyster meat is used to every two pounds of 
water. However small the oysters, when packed with this pro- 



98 CANNED FISH AND GAME. 

portion of water, there can be but very few in the can. And yet 
quantities of this barely flavored liquor are sold throughout the 
Southern States, particularly to the negroes, who are, no doubt, 
attracted by its cheapness. 

The same process of watering could be applied also to other 
articles. The representative of an extensive salmon packing con- 
cern in California informs us, that he has often been urged by his 
customers to furnish a " slack-filled " salmon can — one that could 
be retailed at a profit for about ten cents — with the assurance that 
quantities could be sold at that price. It is only just to state that 
the salmon-packers, despite these solicitations, have thus far ab- 
stained from cheapening their goods by the addition of water. 

The packing of salmon has grown to be a very important 
interest, particularly on the Pacific coast and the leading hoi'ses 
are careful to maintain the reputation of their goods. Lately, 
some of the irresponsible firms have made a practice of putting 
up what are called white salmon, a fish that is in every respect 
inferior to the regular red salmon, and which costs less than half 
as much as the latter. These white salmon cans are put up in 
such a way as to easily deceive the unwary purchaser. 

The canning of cooked fowls, and also game, in its season, is 
carried on to some extent at certain points in the West. Of the 
game thus packed the most common is the prairie-chicken, the 
quail, the grouse and the rabbit. As in the case of most of the 
other descriptions of canned meats the larger portion of these 
goods are packed for exportation. 

We have had the opportunity of visiting several of the estab- 
lishments where this business is carried on, and we could discover 
nothing to condemn, either in the character or quality of the ma- 
terial selected or the process of preparing and packing it. We 
can readily see, however, how quite the opposite might be the case 
without arousing a suspicion on the part of the distant consumer. 



WINES AND LIQUOES. 99 



CHAPTEE XX. 
WINES AND LIQUORS. 



The well-known adulteration of liquors and the manufacture 
of imitation wines has been so thoroughly exposed in the daily- 
journals and periodical publications of the country, that the writer 
does not deem it necessary to discuss the subject in its details in 
these pages. 

The use of inferior wines and liquors in cooking and for flavor- 
ing is no less a mistake than the use of the same articles upon the 
table or at the side-board. The vicious compounds, whose only 
recommendation is their cheapness, which are so often used in the 
kitchen when they would be rejected in the parlor, are no less in- 
jurious to health when taken into the stomach in food than when 
they are taken from the glass. It is altogether too common a 
thing for families to purchase two qualities of liquors, and fre- 
quently from two distinct classes of dealers, the one to be used as 
a beverage and the other " only for cooking." 

As in the case of many articles of food, about the only test of 
quality is to be found in the price, the cheaper always being infe- 
rior and generally unfit for use for any purpose. Let the pur- 
chaser who pays $2.00 per gallon for Cognac brandy, even for cook- 
ing, but bear in mind that the duty imposed by the Government 
upon brandies imported from the Cognac region is $2 per proof 
gallon, and he or she may be able to form an idea of what has 
been purchased under a French label. 

The skill of the compounder has been carried to such a point 
that there is scarcely a well-known brand of foreign wine which 
has not been imitated and in many cases so successfully as to de- 
ceive any one not an expert. 

The writer regrets being compelled to state from actual knowl- 
edge that no class of dealers is more frequently or grossly im- 



100 WINES AND LIQUORS. 

posed upon by the compounder of spurious liquors than the drug- 
gist, and when it is borne in mind, that these liquors frequently find 
their way into the sick-room, the consequences of the imposition 
become appalling. 

v\? e have said that the adulterations of liquors have already 
been sufficiently exposed to require no more than a passing men- 
tion in these pages. We may state that there are but few whole- 
sale houses in which there is not employed an expert compounder, 
whose duty it is to prepare French brandies out of American corn 
spirits, Holland gins with the aid of juniper oil, Irish and Scotch 
whiskies with creosote, and so on through the whole list of liquors. 

The same artist can produce in his laboratory, with equal ease 
and in an incredibly short time, whiskies of any age that the cus- 
tomer may demand and is willing to pay for — the basis of these 
goods invariably being highwines or rectified spirit which, when it 
is of the very best quality, rarely costs more than 20 cents per 
gallon above the Government tax. 

A whisky, however pure its ingredients or carefully manufac- 
tured, is really not fit to be used until it has passed at least three 
summers -01 in other words is three years old. And yet fully 
three- fourths of the spirit sold as old and ripe whisky has never 
been matured, and contains the fusel oil in its crudest state. 
Prune juice and other patent agents are often employed for arti- 
ficially ageing whisky. 

The articles used in adulterating and imitating wines are al- 
most nurnbei'less. They include artificial coloring matters, log- 
wood, ratany root, elderberries, bilberries, tannin, alum, cider, 
lime, lead and copper. As Dr. Wight, of Milwaukee, truly ob- 
serves: " Dealers, and even ' bar-tenders,' have books in which 
recipes are given for making imitations of all kinds of wines." 

Distilled spirit is added to these cheaper compounds to arrest 
or prevent fermentation, which is known to the trade as " forti- 
fying." 



BEER AND ALE. 101 



CHAPTER XXI. 
BEER AND ALE. 



The very general use into which bottled beer has come with- 
in the past few years in families, where it is not infrequently pro- 
scribed by the physician, together with the constantly increasing 
consumption of the beverage in public drinking places, lead us to 
give it our attention as an article susceptible of gross adulteration. 
If, indeed, beer has or is likely to become a national beverage with 
us, as is claimed by the advocates of its use, its purity and whole- 
someness become questions worthy of consideration. 

A strictly pure beer of prime quality should be made exclu- 
sively from barley malt and hops. Corn, however, has come to 
be very generally used by American brewers, and also rice. When 
the last named grain enters into its manufacture, it is known as 
Pilsner beer. Neither corn nor rice can be said to contain any- 
thing especially deleterious, though their use detracts from the 
quality of the beer. The great difference discovered in the prod- 
ucts of different breweries, is more frequently attributable to the 
quality of materials used than to the methods of brewing. 

There are other articles than corn and rice, however, many of 
them cheap and vicious substitutes for the wholesome bitter of 
hops, which are more or less used by unscrupulous brewers. 

The first schedule of the British Licensing Act, gives the fol- 
lowing list of prohibited deleterious ingredients used in the adul- 
teration of beer: Cocculus indicus, common salt, opium, Indian 
hemp, strychnine, tobacco, darnel seed, extract of logwood, salts 
of zinc or lead, and alum. 

The use of tobacco or the seeds of cocculus indicus gives 
intoxicating power; burnt sugar or licorice impart color; quassia, 
aloes (both of which are substitutes for hops) , and coriander and 
caraway seeds increase the flavor; and cayenne pepper and com- 



102 BEER AND ALE. 

mon salt give pungency and create thirst. Soda is very gen- 
erally added to beer by American brewers to impart life and create 
foam. A Chicago biewer informed the writer that out of several 
hundred customers among the saloon men, only two demanded a 
beer free from soda; in explanation of which he added: " There is 
more money for the retailer in a keg of beer charged with soda; he 
sells more foam and less beer. " 

Dr. Parks, of England, gives as adulterants of beer, also, lime, 
sulphate of iron and sulphuric acid, the latter being used to clarify 
and give the hard flavor of age. It is proper here to observe, 
however, that the word beer as referred to in the English law and 
works of English authors who have treated upon adulterations, is 
used in its generic sense and has reference to ale and stout rather 
than to what we understand to be beer or lager beer. Very many 
of the adulterants of English ales, however, analysis has shown 
are used by the American brewers of beer. Dr. Piper, in his inves- 
tigations and analyses, has found tobacco to be often used — one of 
the most deleterious and repulsive adulterants in the whole cate- 
gory. 

Personal investigation by the writer has disclosed the very 
general use of glucose, and occasionally the use of glycerine also 

The bottled beers are generally subjected to a heating or 
steaming process after corking, to preclude fermentation, and per- 
mit their being kept for a long period and shipped to various 
climates, as is frequently the case. 

To detect the presence of many of the adulterants we have 
named would require the skill of the practical chemist. 



AERATED AND MINERAL WATERS. 103 



CHAPTER XXII. 
AERATED AND MINERAL WATERS. 



In the preceding chapter reference has been made to the imi- 
tation of foreign wines. The same observations will apply to the 
fabrication of the better known and more extensively advertised 
mineral and medicinal waters. It would seem that no sooner is a 
public demand established for a meritorious foreign spring prod- 
uct, such, for instance, as the Apollinaris or Hunyadi Janos waters 
or the Friedrichshall Bitter- water, than some imitator, regardless 
of proprietary rights and fearless of trade-mark laws, places upon 
the market a spurious article, yet so closely resembling the genu- 
ine in all the external appearances of bottle, label and corking, 
as to thoroughly deceive and defraud the purchaser. The con- 
tents of these deceptive bottles are, of course, little more than 
salted water, charged, perhaps, with carbonic-acid gas, and utterly 
devoid of the medicinal properties for which they were purchased 
Those who engage in this business are generally the mineral water, 
or " pop " manufacturers of the larger cities, in whose establish- 
ments are produced with equal ease and audacity foreign ginger 
ales, champagnes made from apple-cider, and countless other 
abominations that are supplied in great quantities to the saloons 
for a trifle over the cost of bottling and delivering. 

This is a class of fraud which should by no means be over- 
looked in framing a comprehensive national law for the protection 
of the public against imposition and adulteration. 

The word soda water, as applied to the gaseous water served 
with flavored syrups at the drug-stores and elsewhere in all the 
larger cities, has come to be a misnomer. This gas (carbonic acid) 
is generally generated simply by the aid of sulphuric acid and 



104 AERATED AND MINERAL WATERS. 

marble dust. At one time a certain quantity of carbonate of soda 
was added, whence the name, but this soda is now entirely 
omitted. 

The syrups into which these waters are drawn are in some few 
instances produced from the fruit itself, but we have much more 
frequently found them to be simply a chemical compound — simple 
syrup, colored and flavored with artificial and frequently dangerous 
flavoring extracts. Of the character of these fruitless fruit ex- 
tracts, we take occasion to speak in another chapter. 



FLAVORING OILS AND EXTRACTS. 105 



CHAPTER XXIII. 
FLAVORING OILS AND EXTRACTS. 



As these flavoring preparations enter largely into food, as 
well as confectionery, soda water syrups, etc., we cannot overlook 
them, and a chapter devoted to the consideration of their purity 
and the processes of their manufacture must be read with interest. 

The true oils of orange, clove, etc, are obtained by two 
methods, expression and distillation, chiefly by the latter; and we 
are compelled to state at the very outset that these oils are very 
frequently adulterated or diluted by additions of olive oil and also 
cotton-seed oil. 

A true essence of lemon, orange, etc., should be made from 
the fruit itself, but the very large proportion of the fruit extracts 
represented as true, are produced from the oils we have above de- 
scribed, simply by the addition of alcohol. The extracts of lemon, 
orange, bitter almond, rose, cloves, cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, 
thyme and sweet marjoram, can all be made in this manner. The 
extracts of vanilla, coriander, ginger and celery, are produced by 
mascerating the respective substances in dilute alcohol. 

If the above extracts or those produced either direct from 
fruit or spice or from the oils of fruit or spice were all that we en- 
counter in our chemical researches, we might let the subject drop 
here. That they are not all, nor more than a very small part of 
the so-called fruit and spice extracts will be directly shown. 

The United States Dispensary, pp. 1596, informs us that 
" several of the compound ethers have been found to possess the 
odor and flavor of certain fruits, a property which has led to their 
employment as flavoring materials for confectionery, and desserts, 
under the name of fruit essences." 



106 FLAVOEING OILS AND EXTKACTS. 

The extent to which these compound ethers are used as the 
basis of fruit essences is enormous, and the Dispensary does well 
to observe that " it is important that the materials should be pure, 
especially the fusel oil and the alcohol." 

How very few, even in this enlightened age, and with the pages 
of the Dispensary open to them, are aware of the fact that the 
delicate flavors of the banana or the strawberry that delight the 
palate in drinking the refreshing soda water, or dissolving in the 
mouth the cool creams and ices, are flavors derived from the ref- 
use oil and poison of the stillhouse, instead of from the whole- 
some fruit. 

The chemist, Kletzinski, has furnished the manufacturer with 
a table giving the ingredients and the proportions of the same to 
be used in preparing these false and fraudulent extracts. His 
formula is as follows for pine-apple, strawberry, raspberry and 
peach essences : 

Essence of Pine-apple. — To 100 parts of alcohol add 1 part 
of chloroform, 1 part of aldehyde. 10 parts butyrate of amyl and 
3 parts of glycerine. 

Straivberry Essence. — To 100 parts of alcohol add 1 pai't nitric 
ether, 5 parts acetate of ethyl, 1 part of formiate of ethyl, 5 parts 
butyrate of ethyl, 1 part salicylate of methyl, 3 parts acetate of 
amyl, 2 parts butyrate of amyl and 2 parts of glycerine. 

Raspberry Essence. — To 100 parts of alcohol add 1 part nitric 
ether, 1 part aldehyde, 5 parts acetate ethyl, 1 part formiate of 
ethyl, 5 parts of butyrate of ethyl, 1 part benzoate of ethyl, 1 part 
cenanthylate of ethyl, 1 part sebacic ether, 1 part salicilate of me- 
thyl, 1 part acetate of amyl, 1 part butyrate of amyl, 5 parts tar- 
taric acid, 1 part succinic acid, 1 part benzoic acid. 

Peach Essence. — To 100 parts of alcohol add 2 parts of alde- 
hyde, 5 parts acetate of ethyl, 5 parts formiate of ethyl, 5 parts 
butyrate of ethyl, 5 parts valerianate of ethyl, 5 parts cenanthylate 
of ethyl, 1 part sebacic ethyl, 2 parts salicylate of methyl and 5 
parts of glycerine. 

From different combinations of the same ethers are also pro- 
duced the essences of gooseberry, mellon, grape, apple, orange, 
lemon, pear, black cherry, plum, apricot, quince and banana. 

To illustrate the extent to which the chemical production of 
these false flavoring agents may be carried, we can state that Dr. 
T. D. Williams has succeeded in producing a very deceptive pine- 
apple essence (?) from the refuse obtained from the sewer of a 
Chicago fertilizer manufactory. 



FLAVORING OILS AND EXTRACTS. 107 

It is hardly necessary to observe that many of the compound 
ethers used in the manufacture of essences are poisonous, and the 
reason of there being so few serious results to chronicle from their 
use, is, owing only to the fact that they are taken into the stomach 
in such small quantities. 



.08 TINNED FRUITS AND VEGETABLES. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 
TINNED FRUITS AND VEGETABLES. 



There is scarcely a perishable product of the garden which is 
not packed so as to keep from one season to another — this packing 
being generally in tin vessels. Packing fruits in this manner has 
also very largely superseded their being preserved as formerly. 

Though the use of foreign and dangerous substances to impart 
color, as copper to give a green hue to peas and greengage plumbs, 
is noticed by writers upon the subject, as having occurred in 
Europe, we are pleased to state that our own investigations have 
utterly failed to detect any such practice in this country. 

The only possibility of the vegetables thus packed becoming 
contaminated or rendered unwholesome, is from the action of the 
acid they supply upon the tin vessels in which they are packed, 
and whether this occurs to such an extent as to argue against 
their use as food, we very much doubt. The great quantities of 
these vegetables consumed and the very rare reports of even sus- 
pected accidents, would naturally lead to the conclusion that they 
are both a wholesome and a safe article of diet. 

The action of different fruit acids upon the metals may be 
attended with very different results. Several cases of suspected 
metallic poisoning were reported a few years ago from the use of 
canned pieplant, since which time the canning of this vegetable 
has been almost entirely given up. The tomato, on the other 
hand, which is more extensively consumed than any of the canned 
vegetables, has never, we believe, been suspected. 

As in the case of canned oysters, an undue amount of water 
is sometimes added to certain canned fruits and vegetables by the 



TINNED FRUITS AND VEGETABLES. 109 

packers, simply to cheapen them. This practice is simply fraud- 
ulent without being, in any sense, harmful. 

To avoid accidents resulting from the metallic contamination 
of vegetables, the packers cannot exercise too mnch care in the 
selection of their tin, to see that it is unadulterated with lead, 
which yields much more readily to the action of the acids and pro- 
duces a much more poisonous salt. Care should also be exercised 
in the manufacture of the cans, to see that no more solder is used 
than is absolutely necessary, as in this manner lead may be easily 
introduced. 



110 OTHEK ADULTERATIONS. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

ADULTERATIONS OTHER THAN THOSE OF 
FOOD. 



Having considered the adulterations of food in the preceding 
chapters, the author would carry his investigations toother articles 
of every day use in the household, in all of which, more or less 
deception is practiced by unscrupulous manufacturers and fre- 
quently with the knowledge and aid of equally unscrupulousdealers. 
While in many cases the only loss suffered by the consumers from 
these impositions is that of the money expended, in other cases the 
much more serious loss of health is involved. 

SOAP. 

The ingredients made use of by the manufacturers of cheap 
and adulterated soap to give it weight or solidity, or to increase 
its cleansing and bleaching qualities, which latter is always accom- 
plished at the expense of the article washed, are almost number- 
less. In the category may be enumerated pipe-clay, soap-stone, 
talc, silex, muriate of tin, glauber salts, silicate of soda, starch 
and resin. With the possible exception of the two last mentioned 
all of these ingredients either give a fraudulent weight to the soap, 
or are detrimental to the fabric subjected to contact with them. If 
resin is not used in too great quantities it does not injuriously 
affect the quality, but with this single exception there is no one of 
the nine articles which is either a necessary or an honest element 
in any cleansing compound placed upon the market. 

And does the reader ask what proportion of the soaps ordi- 
narily offered for sale are thus adulterated? Upon the testimony 
of the manufacturers themselves we are compelled to answer, fully 
one-half, if not more. Nor are we prepared to blame the manufac- 
turer wholly for this fraud. The willingness, almost the desire of 
the consumer to be humbugged, the demand for the fullest weight 



OTHER ADULTERATIONS. Ill 

for the least money, and for an article to save labor rather than 
linen, has done much to stimulate and encourage the manufacture 
of chemical and loaded soaps. An extensive manufacturer was 
candid enough to confess to the writer that he had been compelled 
to turn out a spurious as well as a pure article, in order to meet 
the demands of the trade, "though," he added, " we are careful to 
see that it does not go out under our name or be mistaken for our 
pure productions." In the article of soap, as in many articles of 
food to which we have referred, the heaviest is not always the 
cheapest, nor what seems the cheapest the most economical. 

With reference to what are known as toilet soaps it may sur- 
prise the reader to learn that their ingredients are identically the 
same as the soaps of the laundry, the only difference being that 
the former are colored and perfumed. But in connection with the 
soaps of the toilet we are compelled to speak of another evil; 
viz., the use in their manufacture of impure animal fat and its 
effects upon health. 

A prominent physician of Philadelphia, regarding it a duty to 
investigate this matter, recently made a series of analyses and 
experiments which led him to declare that no process of purging 
ordinarly adopted by the manufacturer using diseased animal fat 
was sufficient to remove the organic poisons, or render the soap 
containing them other than dangerous and detrimental to health 
when daily applied to the porous surfaces of the body. Aside, too, 
from its positive injurious effects there is something repulsive even 
in the thought of our performing our daily ab'utions with the aid 
of an article so noxious in itself, however disguised by the coloring 
and scenting of the soapmaker's art. 

Regarding the almost countless washing fluids offered as sub- 
stitutes for soap, the writer is only able to say that he has failed to 
find even one the base of which is not soda ash, which must render 
them all more or less destructive of the fabric cleansed with their 
aid. 

BEESWAX. 

Beeswax is largely adulterated with cerasine, paraffine and tal- 
low. The presence of tallow can be detected both by the taste 
and smell. If it is adulterated with either of the former articles, it 
may be detected by chewing it; if it is thus adulterated, it will act 
like gum ; if pure, it will not make anything like gum, but will 
crumble to pieces in the mouth. These are the more modern meth- 
ods of adulterating wax. It was formerly accomplished with 



112 OTHER ADULTERATIONS. 

earth, meal, resin, etc. The first two render it brittle and gray- 
ish and may be detected by melting the wax. 

The impurities can be strained out. Resin makes the frac- 
ture, when the wax is broken, smooth and shining instead of gran- 
ular. The resin may be dissolved in cold alcohol, while the wax 
remains untouched. 

STARCH. 

While starch itself is used as an adulterant in many articles, 
as in the article of soap, it is in turn also adulterated, though not 
to the same extent that it was done a few years ago, when corn 
was higher than at present and competition in quality was less 
sharp. The only adulterant we have found is lime, and this in 
very small quantity. 

The article of food, known as corn starch, we have found to 
be free from adulteration, though greatly varying in quality. 

POISONOUS COSMETICS. 

There are very few of the so-called hair restorations, com- 
plexion powders, etc., which are not more or less dangerous. In 
a recent paper, Prof. Geo. A. Marriner, of Chicago, remarks : " I 
would like to add that I have analyzed numerous samples of cos- 
metics and powders used on the face and hair. Almost all the hair 
cosmetics, including most of those in common use, I have found 
to be very poisonous, and many of the face powders and prepa- 
rations I have found to contain arsenic or lead. I should not be 
surprised if 20,000 people in Chicago to-day were injuring their 
health and endangering their lives by the use of these cosmetics 
and powders." 

ARSENICAL POISONING. 

Upon this subject we quote at length from an able and inter- 
esting paper, read by Mr. Geo. T. Angell, of Boston, before the 
American Social Science Association, at its last session at Saratoga, 
New York : 

" The amount of arsenic imported into this country during the 
year ending June 30, 1875, was two million, three hundred and 
twenty-seven thousand, seven hundred and forty-two pounds 
(2,327,742). Each pound contained a fatal dose for about 2,800 
adult human beings. It is sold in our markets almost as freely as 
wood and coal, at a wholesale price of from a cent and a half to 
two cents a pound. 

" "What becomes of it ?" 

" I answer it is used in wall papers, paper curtains, lamp 



OTHER ADULTERATIONS. 113 

shades, boxes, wrapping papers for confectionery, tickets, cards, 
children's kindergarten papers, artificial flowers, dried grasses, 
eye-shades and numerous other articles. Among the articles fre- 
quently made dangerous by this or other poisons may be named 
also ladies' dress goods, veils, sewing silks, threads, stockings, 
gentlemen's underclothing, socks, gloves, hat-linings, linings of 
boots and shoes, paper collars, babies' carriages, colored enamelled 
cloths, children's toys, various fabrics of wool, silk, cotton and 
leather in various colors. Arsenic has been found also in toilet 
powders and candles. Professor Nichols, of our Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology, found eight grains of arsenic to each 
square foot of a dress. Another chemist found ten grains of 
arsenic in a single artificial flower. A child in Troy, N. Y., some 
time since, died in convulsions by taking arsenic from a veil thrown 
over its ci'ib to keep off flies. 

" A case has been recently brought to my knowledge of a Bos- 
ton gentleman so severely poisoned by wearing poisonous under- 
clothing that for several days he could hardly see. Possibly the 
largest use of arsenic is in the preparation of our wall papers. 
The Massachusetts State Board of Health, in their report for 
1872, gave twenty-five pages to this subject. These poisonous 
papers are of a great variety of colors — green, blue, red, yellow, 
pearl and other colors. Some are cheap, some costly, some fig- 
ured, some plain, some glazed, some unglazed. There is but one 
way of surely detecting them, and that is by chemical analysis. 
It has been estimated that full three-quarters of all our wall papers 
now manufactured contain arsenic. The Michigan State Board of 
Health has recently published a book containing seventy-five rep- 
resentative specimens of these papers, and by order of that Board 
it has been put into every important public library of Michigan, as 
a warning to the people of that State. It bears the very appro- 
priate title of ' Shadows from the Walls of Death.' This book 
states that these papers are sold in every city and important vil- 
lage of that State, and that their use is increasing. It advises 
(1st) to use no wall paper at all; (2d) never to use wall paper 
without first having it tested for arsenic; and (3d) , if arsenical pa- 
pei is already on the walls, and cannot well be removed, then [as 
some protection ] to cover it with a coat of varnish. 

" There can be no doubt that thousands of people in this coun- 
try are now suffering, and many have died, from the effects of 
arsenical wall papers. Yet their manufacture and sale are per- 
mitted to go on without restriction. ' When I was in Germany,' 



114 OTHER ADULTERATIONS. 

said an eminent Boston chemist to me, ' I discovered arsenic in 
two specimens of wall paper, and the manufacturer was in jail be- 
fore night. Here I have analyzed hundreds of specimens in a sin- 
gle year, and found arsenic in a large proportion of them, but no- 
body was prosecuted.' " 

ADULTEKATED TINWAEE. 

The following from the Boston Journal of Chemistry may be 
read with interest and profit: 

" Attention has recently been called to a new risk of chronic 
poisoning by the old enemy, lead. What we call tin vessels are in 
daily use in every household in the land. They are cheap, dura- 
ble and convenient, and have been considered perfectly safe for 
the thousand culinary purposes to which they are devoted. They 
are safe if the tin plate is honestly made. But, unfortunately 
this is not always to be counted upon. Tin is comparatively 
cheap, but lead is cheapei', and an alloy of the two metals may be 
used in place of the dearer one with profit to the manufacturer. 

" The alloy is readily acted upon by acids, and salts of lead are 
thus introduced into food. The Michigan State Board of Health 
has latety been investigating this subject, having been led to do 
so by a letter from a physician who found that certain cases of 
what had been taken for chorea were really paralysis agitans, 
which could be traced to this kind of lead poison. Other cases 
were brought to light in which children had died of meningitis, fits 
and paralytic affections, caused by milk kept in such vessels, the 
acid in the fluid having dissolved the lead. Malic, citric and other 
fruit acids are, of course, quicker and more energetic in their 
action upon the pernicious alloy. The danger is the greater be- 
cause the lead salts are cumulative poisons. The effect of one or 
two small doses may not be perceptible, but infinitesimal doses, 
continually repeated, will in the end prove injurious, if not fatal. 
Analysis of a large number of specimens of tin plate used in cul- 
inary articles showed the presence of an alloy with lead in almost 
every instance, and often in large quantities. It is safe to assert 
that a large proportion of the tin wares in the market are unfit 
for use on this account." 

In the same article also occurs the following : " It is stated by 
Dr. Kedzie [who is not only president of the Michigan State Board 
of Health, but an eminent chemist] , that a peculiar kind of tin 
plate, the coating of which is largely made up of lead, is coming 
into general use for roofing, eaves-troughs and conductors, and 
it is suggested that much of this lead will eventually be dissolved 



OTHER ADULTERATIONS. 115 

and find its way into household cisterns. Susceptible persons 
may be poisoned even by washing in this lead-charged water, and 
all who drink it, even after it is filtered, are in danger of chronic 
lead poisoning." 

And in a subsequent edition this : 

" Dr. Emil Querner, of Philadelphia, writes us that since we 
called attention to the subject he has tested a great number of tin 
vessels from different sources with nitric acid and a solution of 
iodide of potassium, and found lead in every case." He adds : 
" All my vessels for cooking, etc., are now made of sheet iron, and 
give entire satisfaction." 

MARBLEIZED IRONWARE. 

The wares which will be recognized by the above heading, and 
which have come largely into use within the past few years, are 
deserving of attention. While they are very attractive to the eye 
they are also very dangerous. A chemist of Harvard University, 
who recently analyzed a number of samples, declared them to be 
" alive with poison. " Arsenic is used very largely in their manu- 
facture. 



116 TRICHINA. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 
TRICHINA. 



The frequent infection of the flesh of certain animals used for 
food, and particularly the hog, with the parasitic worm known as 
Trichina, warrants our reproducing the following description of 
the origin, development and characteristics of these minute eni- 
mies of health and life, by Dr. O. W. Wight, Commissioner of 
Health, of Milwaukee, in his annual report for the year 1879: 

"No animal," says Professor Van Beneden, of Louvain, "at 
any time has attracted so much attention as that little worm which 
lives in flesh, rolled up; it is about the size of a millet seed, and 
was found by chance in the dissecting-room of a London hospital, 
in 1832. Let us imagine an extremely slender pin, rolled upon 
itself in a spiral form so as to lodge in a cavity hollowed out in the 
midst of the muscles, in a space not larger than a grain of millet. 
Professor R. Owen gave them the name of Trichina, because they 
are thin as a hair; he added the specific name of spiralis on ac- 
count of the manner in which they were rolled up in their cyst. 
Trichina spiralis is therefore the name of this animal. 

" The trichinae, which are now completely known in the mi- 
nutest details of organization and manner of life, have a distinct 
mouth, and they have a complete digestive tube with an orifice at 
each end of the body, like all worms in the form of a thread. Be- 
sides this nutritive apparatus, trichinaB, like nematodes in general, 
have the sexes divided into distinct individuals, so that there aie 
males and females, which can be easily distinguished from each 
other by the form and size of the body. 

" Trichinae are found in the flesh of almost all the mamals. If 
we eat thistrichinous flesh, the worms become free in the stomach 



TRICHINA. 117 

as digestion goes on, and they are developed with extreme rapid- 
ity. Each female lays a prodigious number of eggs; from each 
of these comes a microscopic worm, which bores through the 
walls of the stomach or intestines, and thousands lodge them- 
selves in the flesh, where they hide till they are again introduced 
into another stomach. " 

With this general description by Professor Van Beneden in 
mind, let us follow the migration of the little viper from the flesh 
of a pig into the flesh of man. A piece of raw or half cooked 
pork, containing encysted trichina?, is eaten. In the stomach the 
cysts are digested enough to set the worms free. It would take 
twenty-eight of them placed end to end to measure an inch in 
length. It would take 600 of them laid side by side to measure an 
inch in width. After being set free they pass from the stomach into 
the intestines and uncoil themselves. Then they grow very rap- 
idly and develop their sexual character. When grown it would 
take only from seven to nine of them placed end to end to measure 
an inch. A great number of eggs in the females are developed 
into embryos. Birth is given to a myriad of little trichinae, so 
small that it would take from 120 to 140 of them placed end to end 
to measure an inch. The enterprising little rascals bore their way 
through the intestines and travel to every part of the body. And 
when they have selected and pre-empted a homestead they coil 
themselves up and each one separately builds about itself a house 
or cyst. Here they wait, years it may be, for some other animal 
to devour the flesh in which they are buried, when they, too, may 
be set free and enjoy a brief honey-moon, like their progenitors. 

The disease caused by the migration of the little trichinae from 
the intestines to the muscular parts of the body, and by their 
growth, is dreadful, and very often fatal. It resembles typhoid 
fever, with swelling and intense pain of the muscles. Death 
usually takes place in the fourth week. The worms have then 
done^traveling, are developed and encysted. If the patients sur- 
vive that period, they may live on for years, but they are pretty 
densely populated with worms. In a pound of human flesh, 
Leuckart found 700,000 trichina?. In a cubic inch, 80,000 have 
been counted. It has been estimated that as many as 250 millions 
may exist in a single pig. 

Trichina? are very tenacious of life. Death of the animal 
which they inhabit does not destroy them. Complete decompo- 
sition of meat filled with them does not extinguish the vital spark 
of their existence. Freezing does them no harm. According to 
Kuechenmeister, ordinary smoking of meat does not disturb tri- 



118 TKICHINA. 

china?. The corpse of a pig infected with them may be entombed 
in a poru- barrel, with plenty of salt, and the worms will survive. 
The carcass of an animal peopled with trichina? may be " impris- 
oned in thick-ribbed ice," may "lie in cold obstruction, and rot," 
without disturbing its encysted denizens. There is something 
sublime, even poetic, in the long, dumb expectancy of these little 
creatures, in their solitary and silent hope of a resurrection in the 
blood-warm stomach of some unknown animal, there to realize 
the Mohammedan glories of a new and fruitful life. 

The only convenient.thing that will kill them is a dose of fire. 
Man usually receives trichinae from pork. According to Fiedler, a 
temperature of 155° Fahr., will destroy free trichinas, but the en- 
capsuled trichinae requires greater heat. I should advise giving 
them a climate of about 300 ° . Nothing but the thorough cooking 
of pork can make it safe food for man. If it cuts red and rare, 
like beef, on the table, it should be avoided with determination. 

There have been grave epidemics of trichinosis in Germany 
and the United States. The disease has probably been more fre- 
quent than hitherto observed. Swine fed on garbage and offal are 
much more likely to be infected than those fed on the wholesome 
products of farms. 



THE ENGLISH LAW. 119 



CHAPTEK XXVII. 
THE ENGLISH LAW. 



The following is the Adulteration of Food and Drugs Act of 
Great Britain: 

Whekeas it is desirable that the Acts now in force relating to 
the adulteration of food should be repealed, and that the law 
regarding the sale of food and drugs in a pure and genuine condi- 
tion should be amended : 

Be it therefore enacted by the Queen's most Excellent Maj- 
esty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual 
and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assem- 
bled, and by the authority of the same, as follows : 

1. From the commencement of this Act the statutes of the 
twenty-third and twenty-fourth Victoria, chapter eighty-four, of 
the thirty-first and thirty-second of Victoria, chapter one hundred 
and twenty-one, section twenty-four, of the thirty-third and 
thirty-fourth of Victoria, chapter twenty-six, section three, and 
of the thirty-fifth and thirty-sixth of Victoria, chapter seventy- 
four, shall be repealed, except in regard to any appointment made 
under them and not then determined, and in regard to any offence 
committed against them or any prosecution or other act com- 
menced and not concluded or completed, and any payment of 
money then due in respect of any provision thereof. 

2. The term ' food ' shall include every article used for food 
or drink by man, other than drugs or water: 

The term ' drug' shall include medicine for internal or external 
use: 

The term ' county ' shall include every county, riding, and 



120 THE ENGLISH LAW. 

division, as well as every county of a city or town not being a 
borough: 

The term ' justices ' shall include any police and stipendiary 
magistrate invested with the powers of a justice of the peace in 
England, and any divisional justices in Ireland. 
Description of Offences. 

3. No person shall mix, colour, stain, or powder, or order or 
permit any other person to mix, colour, stain, or powder, any arti- 
cle of food with any ingredient or material so as to render the 
article injurious to health, with intent that the same may be sold 
in that state, and no person shall sell any such article so mixed, 
coloured, stained, or powdered, under a penalty in each case not 
exceeding fifty pounds for the first offence; every offence, after a 
conviction for a first offence, shall be a misdemeanour, for which 
the person, on conviction, shall be imprisoned for a period not ex- 
ceeding six months with hard labour. 

4. No person shall, except for the purpose of compounding 
as hereinafter described, mix, colour, stain, or powder, or order 
or permit any other person to mix, colour, stain, or powder, any 
drug with any ingredient or material so as to affect injuriously the 
quality or potency of such drug, with intent that the same may 
be sold in that state, and no person shall sell any such drug so 
mixed, coloured, stained, or powdered, under the same penalty in 
each case respectively as in the preceding section for a first and 
subsequent offence. 

5. Provided that no person shall be liable to be convicted 
under either of the two last foregoing sections of this Act in re- 
spect of the sale of any article of food, or of any drug, if he shows 
to the satisfaction of the justice or court before whom he is 
charged that ue did not know of the article of food or drug sold by 
him being so mixed, coloured, stained, or powdered as in either of 
those sections mentioned, and that he could not with reasonable 
diligence have obtained that knowledge. 

6. No person shall sell to the prejudice of the purchaser any 
article of food or any drug which is not of the nature, substance, 
and quality of the article demanded by such purchaser, under a ■ 
penalty not exceeding twenty pounds; provided that an offence 
shall not be deemed to be committed under this section in the fol- 
lowing classes: that is to say, 

(1.) Where any matter or ingredient not injurious to health 
has been added to the food or drug because the same is 
required for the production or preparation thereof as an 



THE ENGLISH LAW. 121 

article of commerce, in a state fit for carriage or con- 
sumption, and not fraudulently to increase the bulk, 
weight, or measure of the food or drug, or eonceal the 
inferior quality thereof; 

(2.) Where the drug or food is a proprietary medicine, oris 
the subject of a patent in force, and is supplied in the 
state required by the specification of the patent: 

(3.) Where the food or drug is compounded as in this Act 
mentioned ; 

(4.) Where the food or drug is unavoidably mixed with some 
extraneous matter in the process of collection or prepa- 
ration. 

7. No person shall sell any compound articles of food or com- 
pounded drug which is not composed of ingredients in accordance 
with the demand of the purchaser, under a penalty not exceeding 
twenty pounds. 

8. Provided that no person shall be guilty of any such offence 
as aforesaid in respect of the sale of an article of food or a drug 
mixed with any matter or ingredient not injurious to health, and 
not intended fraudulently to increase its bulk, weight, or measure, 
or conceal its inferior quality, if at the time of delivering such 
article or drug he shall supply to the person receiving the same a 
notice, by a label distinctly and legibly written or printed on or 
with the article or drug to the effect that the same is mixed. 

9. No person shall with the intent that the same may be sold 
in its altered state without notice, abstract from an article of food 
any part of it so as to affect injuriously its quality, substance, or 
nature, and no person shall sell any articles so altered without 
making disclosure of the alteration, under a penalty in each case 
not exceeding twenty pounds. 

Appointment and Duties of Analysts, and Proceedings to obtain 
Analysis. 

10. In the city of London and the liberties thereof the Com- 
missioners of Sewers of the city of London and the liberties 
thereof, and in all other parts of the metropolis the vestries and 
district boards acting in execution of the Act for the better local 
management of the metropolis, the court of quarter sessions of 
every county, and the town council of every borough having a 
separate court of quarter sessions, or having under any general 
or local Act of Parliament or otherwise a separate police estab- 
lishment, may, as soon as convenient after the passing of the Act, 



122 THE ENGLISH LAW. 

where no appointment has been hitherto made, and in all eases as 
and when vacancies in the office occur, or when required so to do 
by the Local Government Board, shall, for their respective city, 
districts, counties, or boroughs, appoint one or more persons pos- 
sessing competent knowledge, skill, and experience, as analysts of 
all articles of food and drugs sold within the said city, metropoli- 
tan districts, counties, or boroughs, and shall pav to such analysts 
such remuneration as shall be mutually agreed upon, and may re- 
move him or them as they shall deem proper; but such appoint- 
ments and removals shall at all times be subject to the approval 
of the Local Government Board, who may require satisfactory 
proof of competency to be supplied to them, and may give their 
approval absolutely or with modifications as to the period of the 
appointment and removal, or otherwise: Provided, that no person 
shall hereafter be appointed an analyst for any place under this 
section who shall be engaged directly or indirectly in any trade or 
business connected with the sale of food or drugs in such place. 

In Scotland the like powers shall be conferred and the like 
duties shall be imposed upon the commissioners of supply at their 
ordinary meetings for counties, and the commissioners or boards 
of police, or where there are no such commissioners or boards, 
upon the town councils for boroughs within their several jurisdic- 
tions; provided that one of Her Majesty's Principal Secretaries of 
State in Scotland shall be substituted for the Local Government 
Board of England. 

In Ireland the like powers and duties shall be conferred and 
imposed respectively upon the grand jury of every county and 
town council of every borough; provided that the Local Govern- 
ment Board of Ireland shall be substituted for the Local Govern- 
ment Board of England. 

11. The town council of any borough may agree that the 
analyst appointed by any neighboring borough or for the county 
in which the borough is situated, shall act for their borough during 
such time as the said council shall think proper, and shall make 
due provision for the payment of his remuneration, and if such 
analyst shall consent, he shall during such time be the analyst for 
such borough for the purposes of this Act. 

12. Any purchaser of an article of food or of a drug in any 
place being a district, county, city, or borough where there is any 
analyst appointed under this or any Act hereby repealed shall be 
entitled, on payment to such analyst of a sum not exceeding ten 
shillings and sixpence, or if there be no such analyst then acting 



THE ENGLISH LAW. 123 

for such place, to the analyst of another place, of such sum as may 
be agreed upon between such person and the analyst, to have such 
article analysed by such analyst, and to receive from him a cer- 
tificate of the result of his analysis. 

13. Any medical officer of health, inspector of nuisances, or 
inspector of weights and measures, or any inspector of a market, 
or any police constable under the direction and at the cost of the 
local authority appointing such officer, inspector, or constable, or 
charged with the execution of this Act, may procure any sample 
of food or drugs, and if he suspect the same to have been sold to 
him contrary to any provision of this Act, shall submit the same 
to be analysed by the analyst of the district or place for which he 
acts, or if there be no such analyst then acting for such place, to 
the analyst of another place, and such analyst shall, upon receiv- 
ing payment as is provided in the last section, with all convenient 
speed analyse the same and give a certificate to such officer, 
wherein he shall specify the result of the analysis. 

14. The person purchasing any article with the intention of 
submitting the same to analysis shall, after the purchase shall 
have been completed, forthwith notify to the seller or his agent 
selling the article his intention to have the same analysed by the 
public analyst, and shall offer to divide the article into three parts 
to be then and there separated, and each part to be marked and 
sealed or fastened up in such manner as its nature will permit, and 
shall, if required to do so, proceed accordingly, and shall deliver 
one of the parts to the seller or his agent. 

He shall afterwards retain one of the said parts for future 
comparison and submit the third part, if he deems it right to have 
the article analysed to the analyst. 

15. If the seller or his agent do not accept the offer of the 
purchaser to divide the article purchased in his presence, the an- 
alyst receiving the article for analysis shall divide the same into 
two parts, and shall seal or fasten up one of those parts and shall 
cause it to be delivered, either upon receipt of the sample or when 
he supplies his certificate to the purchaser, who shall retain the 
same for production in case proceedings shall afterwards be taken 
in the matter. 

16. If the analyst do not reside within two miles of the resi- 
dence of the person requiring the article to be analysed, such arti- 
cle may be forwarded to the analyst through the post office as a 
registered letter, subject to any regulations which the Postmaster 
General may make in reference to the carrying and delivery of 



124 THE ENGLISH LAW. 

such article, and the charge for the postage of such article shall 
be deemed one of the charges of this Act or of the prosecution, 
as the case may be. 

17. If any such officer, inspector, or constable, as above de- 
scribed, shall apply to purchase any article of food or any drug 
exposed to sale, or on sale by retail on any premises or in any shop 
or stores, and shall tender the price for the quantity which he shall 
require for the purpose of analysis, not being more than shall be 
reasonably i-equisite, and the person exposing the same for sale 
shall refuse to sell the same to such officer, inspector, or con- 
stable, such person shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding ten 
pounds. 

I 5 . The certificate of the analysis shall be in the form set 
forth in the schedule hereto, or to the like effect. 

19. Every analyst appointed under any Act hereby repealed 
or this Act shall report quarterly to the authority appointing him 
the number of articles analysed by him under this Act during the 
foregoing quarter, and shall specify the result of each analysis 
and the sum paid to him in respect thereof, and such report shall 
be presented at the next meeting of the authority appointing such 
analyst, and every such authority shall annually transmit to the 
Local Government Board, at such time and in such form as the 
Board shall direct, a certified copy of such quarterly report. 

Proceedings against Offenders. 

20. When the analyst having analysed any article shall have 
given his certificate of the result, from which it may appear that 
an offence against some one of the provisions of this Act has been 
committed, the person causing the analysis to be made may take 
proceedings for the recovery of the penalty herein imposed for 
such offense, before any justice in petty sessions assembled hav- 
ing jurisdiction in the place where the article or drug sold was 
actually delivered to the purchaser, in a summary manner. 

Every penalty imposed by this Act shall be recovered in En- 
gland in the manner described by the eleventh and twelfth of Vic- 
toria, chapter forty-three. In Ireland such penalties and proceed- 
ings shall be recoverable, and may be taken with respect to the 
police district of Dublin metropolis, subject and according to the 
provisions of any Act regulating the powers and duties of justices 
of the peace for such district, or of the police of such district; 
and with respect to other parts of Ireland, before a justice or 
justices of the peace sitting in petty sessions, and subject and ac- 



THE ENGLISH LAW. 125 

cording to the provisions of ' The Petty Sessions (Ireland) Act, 
1851,' and any Act amending the same. 

Every penalty herein imposed may be reduced or mitigated 
according to the judgment of the justices. 

21. At the hearing of the information in such proceeding the 
production of the certificate of the analyst shall be sufficient evi- 
dence of the facts therein stated, unless the defendant shall 
require that the analyst shall be called as a witness, and the parts 
of the articles retained by the person who purchased the article 
shall be produced, and the defendant may, if he think fit, tender 
himself and his wife to be examined on his behalf, and he or she 
shall, if he so desire, be examined accordingly. 

22. The justices before whom any complaint may be made, or 
the court before whom any appeal may be heard, under this Act 
may, upon the request of either party, in their discretion cause 
any article of food or drug to be sent to the Commissioners of 
Inland Revenue, who shall thereupon direct the chemical officers 
of their department at Somerset House to make the analysis, and 
give a certificate to such justices of the result of the analysis; and 
the expense of such analysis shall be paid by the complainant or 
the defendant as the justices may by order direct. 

23. Any person who has been convicted of any offence pun- 
ishable by any Act hereby repealed or by this Act by any justices 
may appeal in England to the next general or quarter sessions of 
the peace which shall be held for the city, county, town, or place, 
wherein such conviction shall have been made, provided that such 
person enter into a recognizance within three days next after such 
conviction, with two sufficient sureties, conditioned to try such 
appeal, and to be forthcoming to abide the judgment and deter- 
mination of the court at such general or quarter sessions, and to 
pay such costs as shall be by such court awarded; and the justices 
before whom such conviction shall be had are hereby empowered 
and required to take such recognizance; and the court at such 
general or quarter sessions are hereby required to hear and deter- 
mine the matter of such appeal, and may award such costs to the 
party appealing or appealed against, as they or he shall think 
proper. 

In Ireland any person who has been convicted of any offence 
punishable by this Act may appeal to the next court of quarter 
sessions to be held in the same division of the county where the 
conviction shall be made by any justice or justices in any petty 
sessions district, or to the recorder at his next sessions where the 



126 THE ENGLISH LAW. 

conviction shall be made by the divisional justices in the police 
district of Dublin metropolis, or to the recoi'der of any corporate 
or borough town when the conviction shall be made by any justice 
or justices in such corporate or borough town (unless when any 
such session shall commence within ten days from the date of any 
such conviction, in which case, if the appellant sees fit, the appeal 
may be made to the next succeeding sessions to be held for such 
division or town) , and it shall be lawful for such court of quarter 
sessions or recorder (as the case may be) to decide such appeal, 
if made in such form and manner and with such notices as are re- 
quired by the said Petty Sessions Acts respectively hereinbefore 
mentioned as to appeals against orders made by justices at petty 
sessions, and all the provisions of the said Petty Sessions Acts 
respectively as to making appeals and as to executing the orders 
made on appeal, or the original orders where the appeals shall not 
be duly prosecuted, shall also apply to any appeal made under this 
Act. 

24. In any prosecution under this Act, where the fact of an 
article having been sold in a mixed state has been proved, if the 
defendant shall desire to rely upon any exception or provision 
contained in this Act, it shall be incumbent upon him to prove the 
same. 

25. If the defendant in any prosecution under this Act prove 
to the satisfaction of the justices or court that he had purchased 
the article in question as the same in nature, substance, and qual- 
itv as that demanded of him by the prosecutor, and with a written 
warranty to that effect, that he had no reason to believe at the 
time when he sold it that the article was otherwise, and that he 
sold it in the same state as when he purchased it, he shall be dis- 
charged from the prosecution, but shall be liable to pay the costs 
incurred by the prosecutor, unless he shall have given due notice 
to him that he will rely on the above defense. 

26. Every penalty imposed and recovered under this Act 
shall be paid in the case of a prosecution by any officer, inspector, 
or constable of the authority who shall have appointed an analyst 
or agreed to the acting of an analyst within their district, to such 
officer, inspector, or constable, and shall be by him paid to the 
authority for whom he acts, and be applied towards the expenses 
of executing this Act, any Statute to the contrary notwithstand- 
ing; but in the case of any other prosecution the same shall be 
paid and applied in England according to the law regulating the 
application of penalties for offences punishable in a summary 



THE ENGLISH LAW. 127 

manner, and in Ireland in the manner directed by the Fines Act, 
Ireland, 1851, and the Acts amending the same. 

27. Any person who shall forge, or shall utter, knowing it to 
be forged for the purposes of this Act, any certificate or any writ- 
ing purporting to contain a warranty, shall be guilty of a misde- 
meanour and be punishable on conviction by imprisonment for a 
term of not exceeding two years with hard labour; 

Every person who shall wilfully apply to an article of food, or 
a drug, in any proceedings under this Act, a certificate or warranty 
given in relation to any other article or drug, shall be guilty of an 
offence under this Act, and be liable to a penalty not exceeding 
twenty pounds; 

Every person who shall give a false warranty in writing to any 
purchaser in respect of an article of food or a drug sold by him as 
principal or agent, shall be guilty of an offence under this Act, and 
be liable to a penalty not exceeding twenty pounds; 

And every person who shall wilfully give a label with any arti- 
cle sold by him which shall falsely describe the article sold, shall 
be guilty of an offence under this Act, and be liable to a penalty 
not exceeding twenty pounds. 

28. Nothing in this Act contained shall affect the power of 
proceeding by indictment, or take away any other remedy against 
any offender under this Act, or in any way interfere with contracts 
and bargains between individuals, and the rights and remedies be- 
longing thereto. 

Provided that in any action brought by any person for a breach 
of contract on the sale of any article of food or of any drug, such 
person may recover alone or in addition to any other damages 
recoverable by him the amount of any penalty in which he may 
have been convicted under this Act, together with the costs paid 
by him upon such conviction and those incurred by him in and 
about his defence thereto, if he prove that the article or drug the 
subject of such conviction was sold to him as and for an article or 
drug of the same nature, substance, and quality as that which was 
demanded of him, and that he purchased it not knowing it to be 
otherwise, and afterwards sold it in the same state in which he 
purchased it; the defendant in such action being nevertheless at 
liberty to prove that the conviction was wrongful, or that the 
amount of costs awarded or claimed was unreasonable. 
Expenses of Executing the Act. 
29. The expenses of executing this Act shall be borne, in the 
citv of London and the liberties thereof, by the consolidated rates 



128 THE ENGLISH LAW. 

raised by the Commissioners of Sewers of the city of London and 
the liberties thereof, and in the rest of the metropolis by any rates 
or funds applicable to the purposes of the Act for the better local 
management of the metropolis, and otherwise as regards England, 
in counties by tne county rate, and in boroughs by the borough 
fund or rate; 

And as regards Ireland, in counties by the grand jury cess, 
and in boroughs by the borough fund or rate; all such expenses 
payable in any county out of grand jury cess shall be paid by the 
treasurer of such county ; and 

The grand jury of any such county shall, at any assizes at 
which it is proved that any such expenses have been incurred or 
paid without previous application to presentment sessions, present 
to be raised off and paid by such county the moneys required to 
defray the same. 

Special Provision as to Tea. 

30. From and after the first day of January one thousand 
eight hundred and seventy-six all tea imported as merchandise 
into and landed at any port in Great Britain or Ireland shall be 
subject to examination by persons to be appointed by the Com- 
missioners of Customs, subject to the approval of the Treasury, 
for the inspection and analysis thereof, for which purpose samples 
may, when deemed necessary by such inspectors, be taken and 
with all convenient speed be examined by the analysts to be so ap- 
pointed; and if upon such analysis the same shall be found to be 
mixed with other substances or exhausted tea, the same shall not 
be delivered unless with the sanction of the said commissioners, 
and on r uch terms and conditions as they shall see fit to direct, 
either tor home consumption or for use as ships' stores or for ex- 
portation ; but if on such inspection and analysis it shall appear 
that such tea is in the opinion of the analyst unfit for human food, 
the same shall be forfeited and destroyed or otherwise disposed 
of in such manner as the said commissioners may direct. 

31. Tea to which the term : exhausted ' is applied in this Act 
shall mean and include any tea which has been deprived of its 
proper quality, strength, or virtue by steeping, infusion, decoction, 
or other means. 

32. For the purposes of this Act every liberty of a cinque 
port not comprised within the jurisdiction of a borough shall be 
part of the county in which it is situated, and subject to the juris- 
diction of the justices of such county. 



THE ENGLISH LAW. 129 

33. In the application of this Act to Scotland the following 
provisions shall have effect: 

1 . The term ' misdemeanour ' shall mean ' a crime or offence ;' 

2. The term 'defendant' shall mean ' defender ' and include 

' respondent;' 

3. The term ' information ' shall include ' complaint; ' 

4. This Act shall be read and construed as if for the term 

'justices,' wherever it occurs therein, the term 'sheriff' 
were substituted: 

5. The term ' sheriff ' shall include ' sheriff substitute; ' 

6. The term ' borough ' shall mean any royal burgh and any 

burgh returning or contributing to return a member to 
> Parliament; 

7. The expenses of executing this Act shall be borne in Scot- 

land, in counties, by the county general assessment, 
and in burghs, by the police assessment; 

8. This Act shall be read and construed as if for the expres- 

sion 'the Local Government Board,' wherever it occurs 
therein, the expression ' one of Her Majesty's Principal 
Secretaries of State ' were substituted; 

9. All penalties provided by this Act to be recovered in a 

summary manner shall be recovered before the sheriff 
of the county in the sheriff court, or at the option of the 
person seeking to recover the same in the police court, 
in any place where a sheriff officiates as a police magis- 
trate under the provisions of ' The Summary Procedure 
Act, 1864,' or of the Police Act in force for the time in 
any place in which a sheriff officiates as aforesaid, and 
all the jurisdiction, powers, and authorities necessary 
for this purpose are hereby conferred on sheriffs; 

Every such penalty may be recovered at the instance 
of the procurator fiscal of the jurisdiction, or of the per- 
son who caused the analysis to be made from which it 
appeared that an offence had been committed against 
some one of the provisions of this Act; 

Every penalty imposed and recovered under this Act 
shall be paid to the clerk of the court, and by him shall 
be accounted for and paid to the treasurer of the county 
general assessment, or the police assessment of the 
burgh, as the sheriff shall direct; 

10. Every penalty imposed by this Act may be reduced or 

mitigated according to the judgment of the sheriff; 



130 THE ENGLISH LAW. 

11. It shall be competent to any person aggrieved by any 
conviction by a sheriff in any summary proceeding un- 
der this Act to appeal against the same to the next cir- 
cuit court, or where there are no circuit courts to the 
High Court of Justiciary at Edinburgh, in the manner 
prescribed by such of the provisions of the Act of the 
twentieth year of the reign of King George the Second, 
chapter forty-three, and any Acts amending the same, 
as relate to appeals in matters criminal, and by and un- 
der the rules, limitations, conditions, and restrictions 
contained in the said provisions. 

34. This Act shall commence on the first day of October one 
thousand eight hundred and seventy-five. 

35. This Act may be cited as ' The Sale of Food and Drugs 
Act, 1875.' 



PROPOSED NATIONAL LEGISLATION. 131 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 
PROPOSED NATIONAL LEGISLATION. 



Mr. Beale, by unanimous consent, introduced the following 
bill in the House of Representatives, May 23, 1S79. Read twice, 
referred to the Committee on Manufactures, and ordered to be 
printed : 

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of 
America in Conc/ress assembled, That no person, association, company, or corpora- 
tion shall, within any State or Territory of the United States of America, or 
within their jurisdiction, manufacture, sell, or barter, or offer to sell or barter, 
any article of food or drink which, to the knowledge of such person, association, 
company, or corporation, contains any ingredient or material injurious to the 
health of persons eating or drinking thereof, or sell or barter, or offer to sell or 
barter, as pure and unadulterated, any article of food or drink which is adulter- 
ated or not pure. 

Sec. 2. If any person shall have any reason to believe that any article of food 
or drink which is prohibited by the first section of this act from being manu- 
factured, sold, or bartered, he shall have a right to demand a sample of such 
article of food or drink from any corporation, association, or individual having 
the same in custody, and to present the said sample to the nearest analytical 
chemist for his analysis; and should the analysis of said chemist exhibit the 
fact that said articles of food or drink contain any ingredient or material injuri- 
ous to the health of persons eating or drinking thereof, or that the said articles 
of food or drink are not pure and unadulterated, the corporation or individual 
shall pay all expenses attending said analysis, which may be recovered in a sum- 
mary way before any United States judge or commissioner of any circuit court 
of the United States, together with all costs which may be incurred. If any per- 
son fail or refuse to furnish samples of any article of food or drink which may 
be in his custody or under his control, which is suspected of containing any in- 
gredient or material injurious to the health of persons eating or drinking thereof, 
or any article of food or drink which is being sold or bartered, or offered to be 
sold or bartered, as pure and unadulterated, when the same is suspected of 
being adulterated or not pure, he may be required by any United States judge or 
commissioner of any circuit court of the United States to pay a fine not exceed- 
ing dollars, and, in the discretion of said judge or commissioner, be im- 
prisoned until said fine is paid and said sample furnished. 

Sec. 3. Upon complaint in writing being made, under oath, to any United 
States judge or commissioner of any circuit court of the United States that any 
person has violated this act, it shall be the duty of such judge or commissioner 
to issue his warrant, reciting the offense, directed to any United States marshal 
or deputy marshal, or, in the absence of any marshal or deputy marshal, to any 
suitable person who may be selected by him, commanding the arrest of such 
person or persons'. Said person so selected, in the absence of any marshal or 



132 PROPOSED NATIONAL LEGISLATION. 

deputy marshal, shall have the same power and authority, in making said arrest, 
as any United States marshal would have. It shall be the duty of the marshal or 
other person to whom said warrant may be directed forthwith to arrest said per- 
son or persons and take them before the nearest commissioner of the United 
States circuit court, and shall summon all witnesses for or against the persons 
charged, upon a subpoena issued by any United States judge or commissioner of 
the United States circuit court, requiring their attendance to testify before the 
commissioner before whom said person or persons may be brought. Said 
commissioner shall hear all legal evidence for and against the person or persons 
against whom the charge shall have been made ; and if, in his opinion, the party 
charged be guilty of a violation of the first section of this act, a fine shall be as- 
sessed against him of not less than dollars, nor more than dollars, 

which shall be forthwith paid to the said commissioner by the party against 
whom the offense has been proven to have been committed, or by some one for 
him, including all legal and proper costs, and upon failure to pay said fine and 
costs the person against whom the same may have been assessed shall be com- 
mitted to the jail of the county wherein said offense was committed, or, if there 
be no jail in said county, to the nearest jail thereto, there to be confined until 
the said fine and costs be paid, or the party discharged from jail under the pro- 
visions of section 5,296 of the Revised Statutes of the United States. If any per- 
son or persons be found guilty of a second violation of the first section of this 

act, he shall be punished by fine not exceeding ■ dollars, and imprisoned for 

a period of not more than months. No judge or commissioner shall act in 

any case under this act outside of the circuit or district over which his jurisdic- 
tion extends. 

Sec. 4. From any decision of the commissioner under this act the person 
feeling himself aggrieved thereby may appeal to the district court of the United 
States having jurisdiction over the county wherein the offense is alleged to have 
been committed. Said appeal shall be granted by the commissioner upon the 
application of the party feeling himself aggrieved, or some one for him, if made 
within ten days after the rendition of the judgment of said commissioner; but 
said appeal shall not operate as a supersedeas to said judgment unless and until 
the party applying there or, or some one for him, shall enter into a bond before 
said commissioner, with approved security, in the penalty of not more than 

dollars, payable to the United States of America, with conditions to pay all 

damages and costs which may be awarded against the appellant on the hearing 
of said appeal. *Upon granting said appeal all letters relating to the cause shall 
be by said commissioner forthwith forwarded to the clerk of the district court 
to which said appeal is taken, and it shall be the duty of said clerk to docket 
said cause, and the same shall be heard at the first court thereafter, unless good 
cause be shown for a continuance ; the cause shall be heard and determined 
on said appeal by the judge of said court upon the hearing of all legal evidence 
for and against the appellant, unless a jury shall be demanded, and if a jury be 
demanded the cause shall be tried before a jury, as criminal causes in said court 
are tried, except that no indictment, information, or formal pleadings shall be 
required. 

Sec. 5. All fines collected under this act shall be paid into the Treasury of the 
United States, and any person receiving and failing to pay over said fines shall 
be guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof in the district court 
of the United States having jurisdiction over said cause, shall be fined not ex- 
ceeding ■ dollars, and imprisoned not more than years. 

Sec. 6. Any person failing to perform any duty required of him under this 
act otherwise than that which is embraced in section 5, may in a summary way, 
by any United States judge or commissioner of the circuit court of the United 

States, be required to pay a fine not exceeding dollars, and, in the discretion 

of said judge or commissioner, imprisoned until said fine is paid. 

From the action of any commissioner imposing a fine under this section 
there may be an appeal of right to the district court of the United States having 
jurisdiction over the county wherein said commissioner resides. 

Sec. 7. All justices of the peace in the District of Columbia, duly commis- 
sioned and qualified as such, shall have the same jurisdiction and power, and 
shall perform all the duties within the said District of Columbia under this act, 
as by the provisions thereof are conferred upon the commissioners of the circuit 
courts of the United States ; all appeals from said justices to be docketed and 
tried in the supreme court of the District of Columbia. 



CONCLUSION. 133 



CHAPTER XXIX. 
CONCLUSION. 



In the preceding pages we feel that we have given merely 
a hint of the adulterations which chemistry and the microscope 
would show to be practiced by the producers of food and other 
articles of daily use in the household. To exhaust the subject 
would require years of research and fairly clog the press of the 
country to put it in print. Every hour also brings forth its new 
discovery, and the adulterations of to-day may be supplanted by 
other and viler ones to-morrow. It is sufficient for us to know 
that these changes are not in the direction of improvement, nor 
can they be, so long as the stimulating cause and sole object is 
the production of a cheap and yet cheaper article, so long as per- 
sonal reputation, commercial honor, and regard for the public 
health are all lost sight of in the reckless struggle which has 
come to be called competition. 

To fix the responsibility for this most disgraceful state of 
affairs involves an investigation of the causes, which have brought 
it about, as well as the circumstances which encourage its con- 
tinuance. 

To profitably dispose of an article for less than it should cost, 
involves one of two things, either that it has been dishonestly 
obtained, or has been dishonestly manufactured, i.e., that it is 
not really what it is represented to be. When the jobber or whole- 
sale dealer orders from the manufacturer ground black pepper, for 
instance, with the understanding that it is to be billed to him at 8 
or 10 cents per pound, he is simply instructing the manufacturer to 
supply him with something that is not purely or honestly black 



1.34 CONCLUSION. 

pepper. He knows the unground spice, to say nothing of the cost 
of grinding, packing, etc., cannot be purchased by the manufac- 
turer himself for less than 15 cents per pound. And when the 
jobber disposes of this pepper to the retailer he does it, knowing 
that it is an impure and adulterated article. Here the knowledge 
of the fraud sometimes ends, but more frequently the retailer is 
also wittedly and willingly a party to the swindle. He purchases 
the article simply because it is cheap, and if he has the intelligence 
which he should possess, he knows that it is cheap because it is 
impure. This fraudulent pepper has now reached the consumer. 
What is his or her knowledge or responsibility in the premises? 
The only knowledge here is that the article is cheap and very rarely 
indeed is a thought beyond this bestowed upon the subject. The 
question of why it is cheap seems rarely, if ever, to suggest itself. 

And now tracing this so-called pepper back to first hands 
again, what have we found? On the part of the consumer, igno- 
rance. In the case of the retailer, occasional ignorance, but more 
frequently a guilty knowledge. With the wholesaler or jobber, 
full knowledge and instruction to the manufacturer, and finally 
with the manufactuier implicit obedience to " the demands of the 
trade." 

If ignorance of the laws of health, like ignorance of the civil 
law, is no excuse, are we prepared to say that, constructively at 
least, we have not here a complete chain of guilt and accountabil- 
ity, all the way from the manufacturer to and including the con- 
sumer? 

The premium upon fraud and adulteration would seem to be 
placed by the consumer, who, casting all other considerations 
aside, demands only that which is cheap. Did he or she but con- 
sider, for a moment, the fact that the difference in the price of 
articles of the same name is not in the shops, nor in the dealers, 
where and by whom they are offered for sale, but in tne articles 
themselves, the important consideration of quality would suggest 
itself as paramount to the consideration of price. 

If the article labeled "pepper" and offered at retail for 10 cents 
per pound was pepper, it would be cheap indeed. But when it 
consists of barely one-half pepper and the balance wheat mid- 
dlings, its cheapness, becomes very questionable since the pur- 
chaser obtains, in fact, only half a pound of pepper for his money. 

In this case, as in many others, we are forced to the conclu- 
sion, that the responsibility for the adulteration rests very largely 
with the consumer. He has created the demand for the cheap and 



CONCLUSION 135 

impure stuff. He has not stopped to think that that which is worth 
something costs something, but has allowed himself to believe that 
the seeming give-away price of the article he has purchased sig- 
nifies only " a good bargain." The individual who returned the 
sugar to his grocer with the observation that there was too much 
sand for sugar, but not enough for building purposes, arrived at a 
very correct estimate of the value of many of the fraudulent mix- 
tures to be found in the shops. In the case of the consumer whom 
we have instanced above, a slight investigation might have con- 
vinced him that there was too much wheat in the pepper for a 
spice, and too much pepper in the wheat for baking purposes. 

But while we are disposed to hold the consumer accountable, 
in a large measure, for the frauds that are practiced upon him in 
cases such as we have cited, there is a much larger class of cases 
in which he does not in any sense share the responsibility with the 
manufacturer and the dealer. When he pays the full market price 
for butter and is given for his money the cheap, if not impure and 
unwholesome substitute, oleomargarine; when he is given glucose 
for cane sugar, cane sugar syrup and for honey; when he is poi- 
soned with sulphuric acid and the salts of lead and tin in these 
adulterated sweets; when he is allowed to take into his family 
dangerous compounds so adroitly put together that none but the 
practical chemist can detect their character and tell their effect; 
when he is allowed to give to his children confectionery, colored 
with deadly pigments; in short, when he receives from his grocer 
that which at the hands of his druggist would be labeled with the 
ominous skull and cross-bones, his accepting or even demanding 
the article, does not excuse, in the least, the manufacturer or pur- 
veyor, or furnish any reason why they should not be severely pun- 
ished for producing and serving such articles in the guise of food. 

The causes which have brought about and continue to foster 
these vicious and fraudulent practices would seem to be: First, 
an ignorant demand on the part of the consumer for cheap and 
adulterated stuff; second, unscrupulous acquiescence on the part 
of the manufacturer to every demand of the trade; and, third, a 
desire on the part of both manufacturer and dealer to enrich 
themselves by the illegitimate profits derivable from illegitimate 
pursuits. 

To arrest these practices, then, it becomes primarily important 
and necessary, that the public should be informed, that an intelli- 
gent sentiment should be awakened which shall condemn not only 



136 CONCLUSION. 

the corrupted and fraudulent article, but those who produce and 
offer it for sale. 

Mr. Angell, of Boston, the foremost laborer in this much- 
needed reform, has suggested the organization of Protective 
Health Associations, as the quickest and surest method of eradi- 
cating the evil. We can see how such societies might accomplish, 
locally at least, a vast amount of good. They could and no doubt 
would do much toward disseminating the much-needed informa- 
tion. They might also go further and institute prosecutions under 
existing local laws and expose both the manufacturer of, and 
dealer in, adulterated food. But in the opinion of the writer their 
greatest service would be rendered as a factor in arousing a senti- 
ment that would demand national health-protecting legislation 
and in insisting upon the enforcement of such laws when enacted. 

Such associations would, we believe, find active and faithful 
allies in the honest manufacturers and would-be honest dealers, 
a by no means small or uninlluential class. The writer cheerfully 
bears witness to the fact that even many of those who regard 
themselves as having been driven into adulteration as an alterna- 
tive to being driven out of trade, have expressed themselves most 
emphatically and earnestly as favoring national legislation that 
would make the practice a crime. 

" This constant cheapening of goods by the introduction of 
foreign substances has been carried to such an extent that there is 
no longer any profit in it. " 

" We supply our customeis with higher-priced and better 
goods in every case where we can induce them to take such." 

" I would sooner sell a purer article and make a smaller profit, 
for, then there is no danger of it's coming back on my hands." 

" We used to hold our customers much longer than we do now. 
There were two reasons for this: The goods gave better satisfac- 
tion, and prices were more uniform." 

" I would give a six-months' earnings, or, I would write my 
check for $1,000, if it would secure the passage of an honest anti- 
adulteration law. " 

" I would vote to-morrow to make the adulteration of any 
article of food in any manner whatsoever a felony." 

" I would gladly quit the miserable practice, if my neighbors 
would allow me to." 

These are all expressions the writer has heard direct from the 
lips of manufacturers who are more or less guilty of adulterating 
their products, and he does not doubt that in every instance they 



CONCLUSION. 137 

were uttered in perfect sincerity. If such is the sentiment enter- 
tained and expressed by this class, what may we not look for from 
that other class, who, despite all temptation to do wrong, have 
continued to do right — the manufacturers of really pure articles? 

We have referred briefly at the inception of this work to the 
moral effect and the effect produced upon the commerce of a 
country by this wholesale sophisticatien of its products. We can 
but echo the sentiment of Dr. Piper, that "the moral tone of the 
whole community is lowered by the contemplation of such prac- 
tices passing constantly under its notice." 

The English Parliamentary Committee on Adulteration, of 1855, 
stated in their report: "Not only is the public health thus exposed 
to danger, and pecuniary fraud committed on the whole com- 
munity, but the public morality is tainted, and the high com- 
mercial character of the country seriously lowered both at home 
and in the eyes of foreign countries." 

Can the evil be eradicated ? We believe that it can. All great 
reforms must begin with the people, and this reform is no excep- 
tion. By the dissemination of intelligence and the correction of 
popular errors the demand for the cheap and impure mixtures sold 
as food can be greatly diminished, if not prevented altogether, 
and with its outlets thus cut off, the evil will, in a great measure, 
correct itself. A higher intelligence will also demand and secure 
such legislation as is needed to suppress the baser and more sub- 
tle arts, which baffle and must continue to baffle all efforts at de- 
tection outside of the laboratory. 

If these pages shall in any measure contribute to this result, 
the writer and the publishers feel that they will have deserved 
the substantial recognition of the public. 



